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Customer questions accuracy of new meters as staff offers account review
Summary
A customer told the Englewood City Water and Sewer Board his bill implied daily summer use near 1,000 gallons; staff said usage data exists in the back end but is not appearing on bills because of vendor implementation problems and offered to review his account and dispatch field staff if needed.
Jake Gilbert told the Water and Sewer Board he could not find meter-usage information on his new bills and that his summer bills implied he used “over a 1000 gallons a day on average,” though prior November–December 2023 readings suggested about 91 gallons per day.
City staff acknowledged the rollout of a new billing system in July created visibility problems. “We have the information. It’s just it’s not showing up on the bill,” Peter said, explaining the vendor has not fully populated the bill template to display usage and that staff can pull the meter data directly.
Peter and deputy director Sarah Stone offered to walk through Gilbert’s account month by month to identify any discrepancy and, if warranted, send field staff to inspect the meter. “If there’s an issue we will definitely correct it,” Stone said. Staff apologized for customer frustration during the transition and said they are pushing the vendor to fix the template.
Council member Ward asked how customers can trust charges if the bill lacks usage data; staff replied that the back‑end system stores hourly meter reads and the bill’s omission is a template/display problem rather than a lack of usage data. Board members suggested staff later run a citywide comparison once the new meters are fully installed to quantify differences between old and new meters over a climatologically similar year. Peter said that kind of ground-truth analysis is feasible after 12–18 months of full deployment.
Staff said customers with concerns should contact Sarah Stone, deputy director of business solutions, to arrange an account review and potential field audit. The board took no formal action on this item; staff said they will continue working with the vendor to resolve bill display issues and will provide further updates to the board.
