SILER CITY — Town Manager Hank Raper says a software issue may have contributed to recent spikes in some Siler City residents’ water bills.
An error in the communication process from the meters to the billing software is likely the culprit, he told the News + Record.
“It looks like what’s happening though is that some months it’s not recording at all,” Raper said. “Some residents got a minimum bill for two months, and then they got billed 10,000 gallons at one time because that’s finally transferred over.”
The town’s water billing department was audited after residents complained about higher-than-average water bills — two or three times higher than normal — for September. Raper said utilities department staff was sent to review water usage across town by comparing the meters manually and digitally.
“It was showing that we are actually under-billing people,” he said. “The manual read is actually a little higher, not significantly higher, but a little higher.”
This led to staff looking at the back end of the billing software, which is developed by Harris Software, and the meters, built by Badger Meter. Raper said it seems there were months where water usage wouldn’t be documented on the billing site, so customers would only be charged the minimum usage fee.
Then, the next month, they would be charged for both months of usage at once.
“That’s still unacceptable,” Raper said. “We are working to get that corrected as soon as possible.”
Raper said the town would work with customers on a case by case basis to amend billing discrepancies.
Raper and his staff met with representatives from Harris Software and Badger Meter for more than three hours last Friday to figure out the root cause.
It’s very unlikely town staff were “fudging the numbers,” Raper said.
“We were able to pretty quickly determine that was not the case,” he added.
An internal review of the software will be done, Raper said; billing issues may go back beyond September.
“This doesn’t look like it’s going to be an issue that just happened in the last couple of months — I think this is going to go back a couple years,” he said. “[It goes] back to when the software package was rolled out in the town.”
Raper believes there was an error in transferring data when the town switched software providers. There hasn’t been a definite cause named because the third party contractors will also conduct reviews.
“I think that’s where we’re going to find — that the issue was that conversion of data,” he said. “So we’re going to have to go back and internally audit to identify with each account where there might be an issue.”
If customers are having issues with their water bill, Raper said he wants the billing and utility staff to know about it.
“We’re working on addressing it as information comes in,” he said. “That’s why we encourage people if you’ve got questions about your bill, let us know. We want to work with our customers.”
If Siler City customers suspect they’re experiencing water billing errors, contact the Siler City Billing Department at 919-742-4732 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Reporter Taylor Heeden can be reached at theeden@chathamnr.com and on Twitter at @HeedenTaylor.