If you’ve done something dumb and bad publicity results, the quickest way to make the\u00a0story go away is to apologize.<\/p>\n
But not in\u00a0Attleboro, Mass. where the city has threatened to place a lien on the home of Eileen Wilbur, a\u00a072-year-old blind woman because she has failed to pay\u00a0a past-due water bill of 1 cent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The charge was from the previous fiscal year, which ran from July 2007 to July 2008. A computer automatically prints letters for accounts with an overdue balance, but no human reviews them before mailing them. The city paid 42 cents<\/strong> to send the letter which also warned\u00a0of a lien and a $48 penalty if the\u00a0bill isn’t paid by Dec. 10.\u00a0<\/p>\n City\u00a0Collector Debora Marcoccio said she received a fax from the woman’s daughter but it didn’t include a phone number. \u201cIf I had received a phone call, I would have been able to talk to the resident and hopefully resolve the issue,\u201d Marcoccio said, \u201cBut I wasn\u2019t given that opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n Why not just check the computer records, find out who had a past-due bill of a penny, and do something about it?<\/p>\n Imagine\u00a0the goodwill that could have resulted\u00a0had Marcoccio, or the town’s mayor,\u00a0hand-delivered a food basket to the elderly woman on behalf of the city, along with an apology. Talk\u00a0about a\u00a0great photo op! The TV cameras could have been there and it would have been on that night’s evening news.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead, the city let this story grow legs until it became the kind of\u00a0David vs. Goliath saga the media love.\u00a0\u00a0The story\u00a0first appeared in the Sun Chronicle of Attleboro. The\u00a0Associated Press picked it up and distributed it nationwide.\u00a0<\/p>\n Former Attleboro City Councillor Antonio Viveiros\u00a0stepped forward and paid the\u00a0bill, but he did so with a check to underline the absurdity of what he termed an \u201cidiotic\u201d bureaucratic snafu.<\/p>\n A\u00a0doggie treat to Viveiros and to Publicity Hound Sonia Coleman\u00a0for tipping me off to this one. And a trip to the dog house for the folks at Attleboro City Hall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you’ve done something dumb and bad publicity results, the quickest way to make the\u00a0story go away is to apologize. But not in\u00a0Attleboro, Mass. where the city has threatened to place a lien on the home of Eileen Wilbur, a\u00a072-year-old blind woman because she has failed to pay\u00a0a past-due water bill of 1 cent.\u00a0 The\u2026 Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","iawp_total_views":4,"wds_primary_category":606,"footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[168],"class_list":{"0":"post-2360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-public-relations","7":"tag-crisis-communications","8":"entry"},"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Joan Stewart","author_link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/author\/jstewart\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2360"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41434,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360\/revisions\/41434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}