By Verna Slate, Williamson County Bureau
HERRIN, Ill. — Somewhere in a bank's back office, a $55,000 sewer bond payment got filed under the wrong year. Herrin taxpayers are the ones who'll feel it.
According to the Southern Illinoisan, the error is forcing the city to make another payment out of its sewer reserves to cover the mistake. Reserve funds exist for a reason — busted mains, failed lift stations, the stuff that doesn't wait for a budget cycle. Every dollar pulled to fix somebody else's clerical error is a dollar not sitting there when the pipes actually give out.
Herrin's sewer system, like a lot of county infrastructure built when the mines were still paying the bills, doesn't get any younger while banks sort out their ledgers. The city has not detailed publicly, per available reporting, what steps it's taking to recover the misapplied funds or whether the bank will make the reserves whole.
It's a small story next to the big ones this county has seen, but it's the kind that adds up: a city forced to spend twice to fix something that should have taken one clean transaction. Watch the reserve balance — and watch to see who apologizes for it.
— filed from the courthouse steps, where the ghosts take good notes.
— Compiled from reporting by the Southern Illinoisan.
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