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Germantown finds inadvertent summer sewer credit on Q4 bills; board refers review to Utility Advisory Committee
Summary
Village staff identified a software-related error that applied a summer sewer service credit to roughly 1,625 Q4 2024 sewer bills, producing an estimated $49,000 aggregate underbilling. The board voted to send the matter to the Utility Advisory Committee for review and a recommendation on whether to collect the shortfall or absorb the loss.
The Germantown Village Board on Jan. 20 directed staff to refer an investigation of an inadvertent sewer-billing error to the Utility Advisory Committee after staff reported that the summer sewer credit was incorrectly applied to fourth-quarter 2024 bills.
What happened: Village staff discovered that the summer sewer service credit appeared on 1,625 accounts out of roughly 5,000 residential customers for the Q4 billing cycle. The average underbilling was $30.57; the total underbilled amount the village identified is about $49,000. No customers were overbilled, administrators said.
Village Administrator (name not specified) told the board, "that $49,000 loss would not be a material, impact to the water utility," adding that the amount is small relative to the utility's quarterly revenue. Staff described the billing process: meter readings are collected by the Department of Public Works, data are transferred to the utility-billing system in Tyler Munis, and the billing clerk starts a cycle using several entry screens that include a checkbox for summer-credit application.
Administrator and finance staff said they examined the Tyler Munis entries and did not find an obvious human entry error (the summer-credit checkbox did not appear to have been incorrectly checked). Staff are working with Tyler Munis to determine whether a software update or an interaction with a customization (the summer credit is a customization) caused the credit to apply.
Resident and Utility Advisory Committee member Steve Wasilowski, who raised the initial case to staff, told the board he still owed $234 and urged careful consideration before forgiving charges. "I was kinda shocked," Wasilowski said of finding his own billing mistake; he asked that the board consider the Public Service Commission statute he cited (Wis. Stat. 66.08215) that allows customer complaints that could trigger PSC review.
Board action: Trustee Rick Miller moved to send the issue to the Utility Advisory Committee; the motion carried. Trustees asked staff to obtain more information from Tyler Munis about root causes and whether the vendor would accept responsibility if a software defect were identified. Trustee Warren suggested pursuing reimbursement from the software vendor if that firm's work caused the error.
Options discussed: Staff outlined two options: 1) send notices this week to affected customers and add the underbilled amounts to the next billing cycle (March 2025), or 2) treat the $49,000 as a loss to the sewer utility and take no retroactive charges. Staff did not recommend a single path and sought the committee's review.
Next steps: The board asked staff to schedule a Utility Advisory Committee meeting (trustee Warren to coordinate) and to seek a technical explanation from Tyler Munis. Finance will provide staff and the committee with the list of affected accounts and the per-account underbilled amounts so the committee can recommend whether to bill customers, pursue vendor reimbursement or absorb the loss.
Residents who spoke: Wasilowski asked that the issue be investigated thoroughly and that any remedy be fair to all ratepayers; several other speakers had earlier urged timelier public notice and stronger checks on billing processes.
The board set a Utility Advisory Committee meeting for the item and asked staff to return with the vendor's findings and the committee's recommendation.
