Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Utilities Billing topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Resident urges clearer water-billing policy after friend received quadruple bill
Summary
A resident asked the council for consistent, approachable water-billing customer service after a friend received a bill roughly four times larger than expected; the speaker also described technical limits on accessing city meter telemetry for private smart-home monitoring.
Matt Lewis, a Roosevelt resident, used the public-comment period to raise two related concerns: the city's water-meter telemetry and inconsistent handling of high-water-bill complaints.
Lewis said he operates a smart home and has worked to read utility meters by using consumer radio equipment, but the city's water meters are not publicly readable with the same devices. "I want to be able to get real time data off that so I can see if there's a leak," Lewis said. He added that consumer radio tools can read about 95% of certain meters but not the city meters.
Lewis also described a local resident who received a water bill about four times higher than normal because of a leak. The resident, Lewis said, experienced poor communication when they raised the bill with the city, and Lewis questioned whether ad-hoc staff practices in the past had produced uneven results for customers. "I don't believe he wants to return to talk to anybody," Lewis said of the resident, and he asked the council to ensure consistent, citywide practices for billing adjustments.
Council members said the city will refer customers to staff for evaluation and that responsibility depends on where a leak is located — on the city's side of the meter or on a private line. A council member noted that past staff members may have made unilateral accommodations that were not formally sanctioned by the council, and the council said any future exceptions should be applied uniformly.
The council invited Lewis to stay after the meeting to speak with staff about the specific case and reiterated that staff would follow established procedures for billing adjustments.
