City of Englewood utilities officials said the department has begun fixing errors that caused inaccurate bills and has suspended shutoffs and late fees through March while staff and a vendor work through a backlog of customer inquiries.

Peter (staff member) told the Water and Sewer Board that the utilities department believes it "finally had a breakthrough" with its billing vendor to correct the core issue that had prevented usage data and graphs from displaying correctly. Peter said corrected bills would go out later this week. The department has suspended shutoffs and late fees through March to give customers time to make partial payments and for staff to resolve disputed usage questions.

Staff said they have brought on additional resources: an on-call consultant, Hazen, is on-site working with billing staff five days a week for the next several weeks, and two utilities staff members have been temporarily reassigned to help clear a backlog of calls, emails and voicemails.

The board also discussed the city's ongoing advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) rollout. Staff said the new meters transmit readings frequently (a vendor representative said signals occur every three seconds), but the city still needs to install additional communication towers and complete the meter changeout. Staff estimated the meter changeout is about 50–60% complete. Until the communication network is fully in place, some reads must be done manually, which staff said contributed to missed readings and billing anomalies.

A board member raised customer confusion over solicitation letters from HomeServe, an outside company affiliated with Xcel Energy that offers private protection plans for service lines. The board member said these mailings are not affiliated with Englewood City Utilities and staff said the city has posted explanatory information on its website.

Sarah (staff member) also shared two pieces of positive customer feedback: ELCO Drilling (not in the city's service area) sent a letter thanking distribution and collections staff for responding to a reported sewer odor; and a customer donated $1,000 to help pay overdue balances for four customers in need.

On customer-facing technology, staff said customers cannot yet view near–real-time usage; meter data is currently available to city staff on the back end. Staff said the long-term goal is a customer portal that will allow customers to view usage and detect leaks, but full customer access depends on finishing the AMI network and completing the meter changeout.