BILLINGS — For months, Billings residents have experienced delayed water bills followed by seemingly unexplained high prices and water usage after the City of Billings Public Works Department changed the billing software.
The City of Billings hired an audit firm out of Minnesota, SL-serco Inc., to check everything from residential water meters and the software calculations to the city's efforts to keep residents informed during the software change.
Monte Merkel is SL-serco's data quality control consultant that is in Billings to gather data. His first task is to check the randomly selected water meters in homes around the city.
“We are physically looking at the meters right now and collecting data from them. And that's going to get compared to data from the various systems that as it goes through to before becoming a bill,” Merkel said last week. "So, the reads all start at the meter, right? And it flows through different stages to get to billing. And so it's a process and we are looking at the process for this portion."
Merkel started collecting readings from meters on Nov. 6. after SL-serco had randomly selected 30 meters.
“We're seeing what we're expecting to see. And I can't tell you if the results are what we want yet, because we've got a lot more work to do. But you know, what we're seeing is what we think we should be seeing,” Merkel said. “We do this on a regular basis with systems that are doing meter change outs, you know, get the data clean and work through the data quality control. And, you know, that's where we really come in. You know, we do a lot of data quality control with billing systems.”
Merkel said this is just the first steps of a multi-piece process. The audit is set to conclude by Jan. 31, 2025. Once complete, an SL-serco employee will present the results to city council during a public meeting.
According to a spokesperson for the city, 30 will not be the total number of meters checked, but the total number remains unknown.
"You know, I can't really give you any detailed answers because, you know, we just got to see that data and how it continues to go through the system," Merkel said. "Until that time, all we have is data that hasn't been connected. So, you know, that's the whole process. So we're in the first stage."
