SL-serco, Inc. has been conducting audits, such as the one they are currently conducting in Billings, for over 50 years.
The Minnesota-based firm started their process by checking 30 randomly selected water meters in residential homes, which is an important first step, according to the company's CEO David Allen.
“Prior to looking through the data, we pick up a subset, and that was the 30 that we went to. And we go out and and really do look at their meter, look at the data that was there, look at the result that comes off the electronic system, look at it coming into the billing, those 30 people we look at every kind of strand,” Allen said on Monday.
The city launched the audit after fielding complaints from hundreds of residents that their monthly bills were too high, sometimes by hundreds of dollars
Leslie Poling was one of the residents selected by the firm using a random generator.
"Super easy. They just came in and explained what they were doing, wanted to know where the meter was, and then also looked outside. There's a transmitter on the outside of the home. So, wanted to check that the meter, that the number matched, and then that they also matched it to their computer systems. And then looked on the outside of the home to make sure everything was transmitting appropriately," Poling said. "I think one of the neat things with being involved with the audit was that now I'm very clear on what the process is. And they do seem like they are trying to be more transparent and to be a little bit more careful about what they're saying, how they're portraying what the process is."
Thirty is far from the final number. According to Allen, SL-serco is looking at all the residential bills.
"When we do the review of all residents, we can then say, well, of the entire group of residents, we found, you know, 1% had this happen, can we replicate it in 30? If we can, then we're confident that we have a lot of the information. If we can't, then we obviously go out,” Allen said. "What we do is we receive the files and we don't see information about them personally. What we see is, you know, information that identifies meters and accounts and each itemized charge. And we take those charges and try to calculate them ourselves. So, we do it based on the information on rates and how they make decisions on billings, you know, how they're, how they're making decisions to calculate the bill. And if we can execute and come up with the same number that the city did, then it confirms the process."
The firm is also looking at a few months of bills when the city was using the old billing system, compared to a few months using the new billing software.
"If we see a problem, that's where we start digging in deeper and say, this subset had an issue or this subset had a, had a challenge. It's not uncommon for us to find issues and to bring those to the table," Allen said. “It's impacting the residents and Billings. And, you know, we want to be able to get an answer for the city administrator as quickly as possible.”
Additionally, the firm is hiring a third-party company to send at least 45 meters from homes to test.
"They set it on a bench and run a known quantity of water through. And they run it at different rates so that, you know, a water going at a very slow rate might test out perfectly. At a medium rate, might test out perfectly. But at a high rate has an issue. So, they run it at all three of those levels," Allen said. “I wouldn't be surprised if, depending on the results of it, that we do some additional testing afterward or have a game plan beyond.”
Allen anticipates the data evaluation of water bills to take a few weeks.
