Chancery Judge Vickie Cobb on Thursday granted a preliminary injunction, barring the City of Batesville from cutting off water service to 10 residents of Stage Coach Gap Trailer Park owned by Coltaire Properties.

City aldermen had voted unanimously at their September 4 meeting to cut off the water for non-payment. The controversy began more than one year ago when city officials voted to replace the individual meters serving each trailer with one master meter.

Attorneys Kirk Willingham, who has served as spokesman for Coltaire properties during meetings of the city’s mayor and aldermen, and Jeff Padgett had sought a temporary restraining order to stop the city from enforcing the September 4 decision.

Batesville city officials, following today’s (Friday, September14) meeting to finally adopt the 2013 budget, discussed the matter, at the advice of assistant City Attorney Colmon Mitchell, in executive session.

Prior to the aldermen’s vote to close the meeting, Mitchell said the injunction was “not unexpected.” The question before the judge on Thursday, Mitchell said, was “whether somebody will suffer irreparable harm.”

The judge determined that the residents’ loss of water took priority over the city’s loss of income for the water, Mitchell said, and issued the injunction for forestall water cutoff while legal remedies are pursued. The judge ordered that residents of the park could have water service restored by bringing a copy of their leases and a $100 renters water deposit by 5 p.m. Friday.

During the executive session on Friday morning, Mitchell was expected to advise the mayor and aldermen about the city’s options for further pursuit of payment for water used by residents of the park.

Aldermen voted unanimously in September, 2011, to install one master meter on the water line serving the trailer park.

Willingham attended the March 6 meeting of city officials, questioning the legality of the changeover to one meter and sending him the bill for the water usage. At that March meeting, Water Superintendent Mike Ross, responding to a question from Alderman Stan Harrison, said that when city workers placed locks on the individual water meters for nonpayment, residents simply cut them off and restored water flow themselves.

Willingham told city officials at the March 3 meeting that water department workers were not reading the meters. “We had to dig the meters out …” the Coltaire representative said.

At the second March meeting, on March 20, attorney Mitchell told the mayor and aldermen that he had prepared a letter to Willingham citing state statutes and city ordinances that substantiated the city’s authority for the change to one meter.