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Public Works approves water/sewer zero‑use adjustment and repayment policy to limit retroactive billing
Summary
Faced with months of missing meter reads from equipment or management lapses, the commission approved a policy limiting retroactive recovery to 12 months with repayment plans and hardship abatements; staff will implement monitoring and report back.
The Concord Public Works Commission on Sept. 11 approved a policy to manage accounts that register repeated zero reads, a problem staff traced to transponder failures, meter hardware aging and staffing disruptions during the COVID period.
Staff reported approximately 245 accounts currently with zero reads and roughly 80 accounts with 10 months or more without a read out of about 5,500 total accounts. The director and water/sewer staff described two recurring scenarios: (1) the meter is still registering but transmissions failed, in which case staff can retrieve register information and compute an average monthly use; and (2) the meter stopped registering, requiring a case‑by‑case approach with a new meter installed and a short baseline period to estimate use.
The policy approved by the commission limits retroactive billing to a one‑year lookback when a previously unbilled metered use is discovered and proposes spreading any required repayment over an affordable schedule (staff suggested up to 12 months) to reduce immediate hardship. Staff emphasized the policy will default to favoring the customer when uncertainty prevents a reliable estimate. Existing abatement rules would remain available for atypical hardship cases and staff suggested the director would retain discretion to recommend abatements.
Commissioners pressed for operational improvements to reduce future zero‑read aging, such as exception reporting, earlier outreach after two months of zero reads and hiring the recently onboarded business analyst to help re‑establish meter‑management routines. Staff estimated unrecoverable losses for the prior period in the order of $50,000 and said the town will rely on lien authority rather than shutoffs for unpaid balances.
Commissioner David DeLong moved to approve the 0‑use adjustment and repayment policy as described in the Sept. 5 memo prepared by the public works director; the motion was seconded and passed by the commission. Staff will report back within six months on implementation metrics and the aging of zero‑read accounts.
