WATER BILL FIASCO
July 2022: Pearland City Council opts to move away from the 32/30 plan, adopting the 32/27-29 plan to catch up on lost payments by mid-November.
January 2021: An ad hoc citizens
April 2020: City Council adopts plan to read water meters every 32 days and bill every 30 days.
committee focused on utility billing is formed.
With the adoption of the plan to move away from the 32/30 system, Pearland o cials hope a four-year e ort ends prior to the start of 2023.
SOURCE: CITY OF PEARLAND COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
2020
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2018
November 2022: All payments to the city will be caught up; Pearland will move to a traditional billing cycle.
May 2021: The ad hoc committee
July 2018: The city of Pearland begins reading water meters every 28 days and billing every 30 days.
February 2020: Pearland reports water accounts in the city are 71- 78 days behind in water bill collection, accounting for $6 million in uncollected payments.
recommends doing away with the 32/30 water billing plan.
NEXT STEPS Pearland’s new goal is to complete the Advanced Metering Infrastructure. Implement AMI technology; Itron aiming for end of 2022 Itron to connect water meters to network, a cloud where water usage data will be stored (48% of customers uploaded as of Aug. 8) Collect data from data meters uploaded to network Launch Water Smart app for residents, allowing ability to track data online
may signal a problem. Itron, the company installing the AMI technology, gave the city a new target completion date of end of 2022. Pearland agreed to a $15.97 million contract with Itron in March 2018, which was supposed to be completed by February 2020, but a plethora of delays Itron faced has slowed the com- pletion, said Robert Upton, Pearland director of engineering. The switch will address another utility bill issue facing Pearland. Because the city was 71 to 78 days behind in water payments when the 32/30 plan started, Pearland was charging customers for water they
used as much as two months back, Lee said. While the city was slowly closing the lag in payments every month, it did not allow for any residents who felt their charges were inaccurate to dispute them because the city’s water meters can only store data for up to 45 days, he said. With residents’ con dence in the city’s water billing already low, according to the Raftelis report, the switch to AMI technology will be crucial to regaining public favor, Davis said. “AMI will be important for [the city] to be able to roll out that water source,”
Davis said. “I think that is going to play a bigger role in rebuilding trust.” The city’s ultimate goal is to have all future data from the meters uploaded to a network that will allow residents to view their usage through an online portal using Water Smart and not be restricted to only a 45-day window to dispute a charge. “We have got to turn a corner on water billing,” Cole said. “We have got to have successes there, and [AMI] is a critical component to it.”
For more information, visit communityimpact.com .
SOURCE: CITY OF PEARLAND COMMUNITY IMPACT NEWSPAPER
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