Pearland - Friendswood Edition | September 2022

PAYMENT ENDGAME

At the July 11 council meeting, Pearland City Council voted in favor of moving away from the 32/30 plan and adopting a plan that went into eect at the end of August to catch up all Pearland water customers in payments by November.

caught up by November and move to a new billing schedule by December. To end the 32/30 plan early, Pearland water customers are now in the 32/27-29 plan, which began at the end of August. The 32/27-29 plan bills water customers for 32 days of water usage every 27 to 29 days, depending on the cycle customers reside in, Lee said. To educate its water customers, Pearland created a webpage dedi- cated to the plan, Lee said. The city also did social media posts, wrote its own news article about it on the city website and added an extra insert with each customer’s utility bill that explains the new plan, he added. All of the city’s communication eorts explain the revised bill plan, including when each cycle will be caught up in payments and what Pearland’s new water billing plan is beginning in December, Lee said. “We tried to capture everything that we could,” he said. “We know that we are not going to reach every single customer, but we are putting as much information out there as possible in as many places as possi- ble so there is little opportunity to be surprised by this.” In the aftermath of the water meter reading issues, Pearland implemented several changes to ensure a similar issue does not occur again, Pearland Utility Billing Manager Nancy Massey said in a written statement. Raftelis Financial Consultant, one of the companies Pearland hired to review the city’s utility billing department, presented its ndings to council in January 2021 and gave the city a list of recommendations. Pearland has implemented sev- eral recommendations since then, Massey said, which include revamp- ing the city’s nance division, focusing on transparency and col- laborating among departments. The creation of the Pearland Water brand in April was a byproduct of the Raftelis report, Lee said. “I don’t know if you can pinpoint any one [change],” Lee said. “It has been eectively a complete overhaul of the system.” Rebuilding trust Once the city collects all of the pay- ments from the 28-day reading cycle, its attention will turn to implement- ing the Advanced Metering Infra- structure technology, which will allow customers to track their water usage through an online app and set alerts for any changes in usage that

SOURCE: CITY OF PEARLANDCOMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER

B R O O K S I D E R

ALMEDA SCHOOL RD.

288

PEARLAND PKWY.

521

Average bill cycle for residents under…

CYCLE 14

CYCLE 13

CYCLE 12

CYCLE 11

Sent out every 30 days

32/30:

Last bill under 32/30:

July 28

Aug. 13

Aug. 6

Sept. 30

32/27-29 catch-up plan:

Four bills sent under this plan

Three bills sent under this plan

One bill sent under this plan

Last bill under 32/27-29 plan:

Oct. 27

Nov. 17

Nov. 10

Nov. 3

New cycle:

Sent out every 30 or 31 days

First bill under new plan:

Dec. 18

Dec. 11

Dec. 3

Nov. 27

For specic information on water billing dates, go to: www.pearlandtx.gov/departments/ water-billing/32-27-29-plan

days between meter reads. “Some [months] it would be 29 days; other months it would be 32, 34 days,” Lee said. “There could be a three- to four-day swing from month to month on meter readings, which has an impact on your bill.” The feedback the city received from its customers was it was hard for them to plan ahead and budget for their bill because it could uc- tuate. The eventual solution was to read the meters every 28 days. On the billing side, however, Pearland’s code of ordinances does not allow the city to bill more than 12 times per year, Lee said. Therefore, even though the city read meters every 28 days, customers continued to be billed on a 30-day basis. Over time, it created a latency period that developed a payment gap worth roughly $6 million, Lee said. “That’s where it went wrong,” Pearland resident Jimmy Davis said. Davis also served on the ad hoc

committee created in January 2021 to make recommendations to coun- cil on the water billing plan. Once the missing revenue was dis- covered, Pearland sta presented three options to City Council, which included forgiving the $6 million decit; charging a one-time pay- ment to collect the decit at once; or charging water customers for 32 days of usage every 30 days, also known as the 32/30 plan. “The 32/30 plan was essentially to reverse the decision that had been After more than two years on the 32/30 plan, City Council opted in July to move away from it because it was brought back to the table by new mem- bers Koza and Barry, who campaigned on addressing the water billing issues. The city is aiming for all four cycles—or areas of town split into dierent billing schedules—to be made years ago,” Lee said. Pearland’s new billing plan

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November. Once every cycle is caught up, meters will be read every 30 or 31 days depending on what month it is, according to the city. “Anything that can complete and get 32/30 done faster is good,” Pearland Mayor Kevin Cole said. “It checks a box. It gets that part of it over with.” Billing issue origin The catalyst to Pearland’s water billing issue began in 2018 when the city switched over to a 28-day water meter-reading cycle, Pearland Director of Communications Joshua Lee said. Pearland customers raised complaints about the volatility in the

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