Roger McCredie at the Asheville Tribune calculated the City of Asheville has, since 2013, spent almost $700,000 in lawsuits attempting to gain/regain rightful ownership of the municipal water system. To put that in perspective, the city’s budget is $154,365,775, and its population, at last count, was 87,236. A lot of the folks don’t pay taxes, and a lot of businesses do; but one can use that number for ballpark-estimating per-capita service opportunity costs.