Dan Wagner was one of more than a dozen Billings residents to speak at a October city council meeting on software issues that affected more than 41,000 homes and businesses on the city’s water and sewer system.
“How can my water bill just more than triple in just a few months when my consumption has been the same?” said Wagner.
Jennifer Klatte stepped up to the podium and told elected officials her most recent bill reflects nearly three times the amount of water she typically uses.
“I want an audit. I want the city to be paying back some customers, myself included, and I want some accountability,” Klatte said.
City Public Works said problems began in June, when they fielded a number of technical speed bumps and accuracy issues transitioning to new billing software.
Deputy Public Works Director Jennifer Duray said part of the reason for converting to new software in the first place is that they had always had trouble getting data out of the system.
“Because we had a lot of missing data, a lot of bad data that went over, it was a lot of cleanup in the beginning before we could start doing bills,” said Duray. “Our focus was actually 100 percent on accuracy. There were some bills that we did a cancel rebill on because there were errors on them. So, we’ve doing everything we can to make sure that the bills that we do send out are accurate."
As a stop gap, Duray said staff sent bills for 60 days and 90 days instead of the typical 30, which is a big part of why people are seeing higher fees. Other contributors include rate increases and fee changes that went into effect at the same time and higher water usage because of dry conditions.
Duray says they’ve cleaned up the data and should be back on track to send out 30-day bills the week of October 7. The city is investigating what went wrong and looking for companies to do an audit of its utility billing and water metering systems to help restore public trust.
Check the Billings City Public Works website for more information about paying utility bills.
