Every so often, we ask our donors to send us their questions, and we do our best to answer them.

There were a number of water questions this month — some of them are great questions we're already working to get to the bottom of, and you'll see those in future stories once we get them buttoned down.

There were also a number of great questions about education, speed cameras and restaurants.

Once again, thank you for making The Richmonder possible. We quite literally couldn't do it without you. On to the answers...

Jump to: Water bills | Speed cameras | Old restaurants | Ditching property taxes? | Education funding | Registrar | Criminal charges in water crisis | How FOIA works

I've seen lots of buzz on social media about Richmonders facing higher than normal water bills. I think the fear is that the city is transferring the costs of their mistakes during the outage onto ratepayers. Is there any truth to this?

I’ve heard from multiple readers who felt their January utility bills looked unusual, but there are several reasons why that could happen.

In addition to the water crisis, January was an extremely cold month. That means many households using city-provided natural gas for heat saw higher bills for reasons unrelated to water usage. Severe cold also raises the possibility for leaks and damage to water pipes.

I asked city officials if they were aware of any broad billing issues related to the water crisis. To check, the city analyzed utility bills for more than 7,500 city homes.