Council adopts ordinance to formalize leak and pool adjustments for water and sewer billing

The McAlester City Council approved an ordinance that moves long‑standing utility billing practices into the municipal code and changes how leak and pool adjustments are calculated.

Kara (utility billing staff) told the council the ordinance converts prior resolution and policy items into law and separates water and sewer calculations. Under the new language, water leak adjustments will continue to be treated as split between the city and the customer (because water is treated water), while sewer adjustments for appropriate accounts will be written off differently so that sewer‑only customers are not penalized when their water supplier is another provider.

Staff said the change responds to situations in which customers receive water from rural or neighboring systems (for example, Krebs or a rural water district) but use McAlester sewer service; the new approach aims to avoid forcing sewer‑only customers to bear split adjustments designed for fully city‑metered accounts.

Council approved the ordinance; it was not adopted as an emergency measure. Staff said the effective date will be 30 days after publication in the legal newspaper and that pending leak adjustment requests on staff desks will be recalculated under the new method once the ordinance is in effect.