Have you experienced unexplained jumps in your monthly water/sewer bills that you could not figure out, just to have it go back to what your average total bill was the following month? Have you had unexplained "usage" on your bill when you were not even using the water/sewer services, such as being out of town? Have you attempted to get an answer from the Utility Department in the past and were told that you must have a leak or were asked to pay a fee to have a study done on your meter to find the problem, just to be ultimately told that no problem was found? Have you had your meter even replaced and had it happen again? If you have answered, "Yes," to any of these questions you are not alone!
Finally, the customers of Polk City Utilities might be getting the truth. Mr. Sanderson, the temporary contract consultant from FGUA, who we jokingly call the $1,700 man, since the city is paying him $1,700 a week for his services, may have revealed in Monday's November 8th meeting what the city has not disclosed for quite some time. There is a software glitch with some of the new radio readable water meters that have been installed to replace the older manual versions.
For several years now, mysterious increases in water/sewer bills have been happening across the city. One individual told me when they had this experience their water bill jumped more than $200 in one month. She spoke directly with Cory Carrier, the City Manager at the time, after getting unsatisfactory answers from others in the Utility Department on her issue. After explaining the problem, Cory responded with a response somewhere along the lines of, "It happened again!" But Ms. Carrier stopped herself mid-thought and would not explain what she meant by that comment. The problem at the time was resolved by Ms. Carrier issuing a partial credit to the account, but an explanation was never provided about how the inflated charge occurred in the first place. How many times have water bills been inflated over actual use and the customer did not question it? Or after questioning it, paid to have a plumber come out and check for leaks, or ended up paying the higher bill because they were told that they must have used the water, but not remembered? God only knows!! Not only are Polk City Utility customers subject to water fees approximately 200% higher and sewer fees 200-400% higher than surrounding utility service providers, now we find out that we very likely have been overcharged for water/sewer usage we never even used, but have no way to prove it!! Not to mention, there is no grace period for customers who are not able to pay their bills. They get shut off with no warning, not even a courtesy call or letter. Other municipalities like Auburndale have a 3 month rolling grace period which results in almost no shut offs. What Polk City Utilities is doing is downright criminal.
From what Mr. Sanderson explained is that some of the errors were due to human error by physically misreading the meters. Most of the discrepancies are occurring with the newer meters that Polk City has purchased from the City of Lakeland. Maybe this is why Lakeland is getting rid of them? These meters have the ability to be read remotely so the meter readers do not have to physically open up the water meter box to physically read the numbers. It is all done electronically using special equipment that can be used from inside a car driving by the meter. The problem is occurring with the software used on this system, the meters, and the billing system. Mr. Sanderson said that prior to the new meters being installed, they must be programed. The staff had not been properly trained on how to do this, so time after time meters that were not programed or were improperly programed were being installed, resulting in inconsistent meter readings that would happen intermittently making it very difficult to troubleshoot. Because this service of meter reading has now been outsourced to an outside company in attempts to save the city money, this has only complicated the problem with miscommunications and untrained or under trained staff. Even after repeated replacements of meters the problems were not resolved, since the same glitches or programming errors were repeated time and time again. He did say that the older manual meters are more reliable, but those are subject to human error in the reading process and of course take much longer to read.
Mr. Sanderson said that it looks like they are getting a handle on the problems, but it will take time to work the bugs all out of the system. Please keep this in mind when you get your monthly water/sewer bills and do not assume they are always accurate.
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