The Harrisonville Board of Aldermen voted to approve a $45,502.58 adjustment to a utility account after staff discovered a metering error that under-recorded electric usage for several months.
City staff member Jeremy told the board that a change to a commercial customer's electrical service resulted in partially recording CTs (current transformers), producing unusually low bills for April, May and June. "There's been a mistake made on [a] customer's utility bill. This, unfortunately, was in their favor," Jeremy said. Staff estimated the missing usage by averaging the same months from the prior two years, producing the $45,502.58 figure.
The board discussed the months involved and the estimation method. Alderman Fouch asked whether the city uses system checks to detect partial meter recordings; Jeremy said the city's monitoring primarily flags zeros and that many low reads across the system make exhaustive follow-up impractical. Jeremy also said the electric department corrected the meter after discovering the issue, and that the city had since communicated the estimate to Universal Forest. "They said, 'yeah, I agree. It actually looks low to us,'" Jeremy said, reporting the customer's response.
A motion to approve the adjustment was made by Alderman Davidson and seconded by Alderman Turner. The motion passed on roll call with Ayes from Aldermen Turner, Cheney, Doerhoff, Davidson, Fouch, Franklin and Mills; Alderman Milner was excused. The council bill enabling adjustments over $15,000 was recorded as Resolution 2025-24.
The board did not adopt additional changes to the city's metering or billing policy at the meeting; questions about longer-term monitoring and specific procedural changes remained part of the discussion but no direction was recorded as a formal follow-up action.