The auditing firm made its presentation to the city council on the water bills, saying that the meters were accurate and the system correctly calculated the bills.
There was a chance for the public to comment as well as for the city council to give its input, during a work session at the new city council chambers, the old federal courthouse, at 316 North 26th Street.
Billings residents have been waiting to find out what happened with their water bills last year.
“So that that process of going through those initial billings and their commitment to not send out erroneous bills is what caused the whole system to back up and cause the errors that exist,” said David Allen, SL-serco C.E.O.
Allen says implementation and communication were the big reasons for the confusion.
SL-serco determined metering and billing were accurate, with all 76 meters randomly tested showing no instances of overbilling.
“They were pulling in data for 60 and 90 days,” said Chris Kukulski, Billings city administrator. “And we have a tiered rate structure where you pay more, the more water you use. That system created some overcharges.”
The report does acknowledge errors when the city first transitioned to the newer software caused by what it says were inaccuracies in the initial set up of the new system and human error driven by lack of training, system knowledge, and documented procedures. And 15,000 of around 40,000 bills initially had errors.
“One of the things that has come out of this is that there's nothing nefarious that's happened,” said Councilman Scott Aspenlieder. “There's no shucking and jiving that occurred to try to swindle money anywhere. There certainly have been things that we messed up and Chris and I have talked a lot about extreme accountability.”
Some of the public still had their concerns.
“You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you'd sent out two bills instead of combining them,” one citizen said.
“I don't trust this new system because I have two bills,” one resident said. I have a bill from June 2024. I guess that would be the legacy system. So I used 26,000 gallons. I have a bill, my double bill, the July-August bill. It says for June 2024, I used 43,000 gallons. That's why I don't trust the new system."
And the city council wants to bring back the trust.
“I do want to thank you for working through this,” Councilman Tom Rupis said to the audit team and city management. “With all diligence and doing as much as we can to get the public's trust back. Everybody's been willing to step up and talk openly and honestly about some pretty tough decisions that were made and circumstances.”
