Complaints over high water bills swamp city

FORT SMITH — A wave of high water bills is the latest example of city mismanagement that has eroded the trust of the people, Mayor George McGill said last week in a statement he delivered during the city directors meeting.

“Simply put, I’m not happy and I know I’m speaking on behalf of many, many people of Fort Smith,” McGill read in a long statement at the end of the meeting.

Many residents have complained that they have received abnormally high water bills and have expressed frustration with the city as they try to resolve those complaints. McGill said the city’s customer service in response to the water bill issue has been haphazard and reactive.

Excellent customer service was one of the planks of McGill’s election platform last year, along with leadership, transparency and change. He called the city’s customer service poor.

“It’s kind of like a citizen disaster,” City Director Keith Lau said at the meeting. The chaos and criticism from the water bill problem has distracted directors and McGill from pursuing more positive issues for the city, he said.

McGill said he wants to create a committee of citizens to “develop better ways forward on customer service, customer education and affordability in planning of a consent decree improvement project.”

He said that at the city directors’ next regular meeting April 2, he wants to introduce legislation that would create the new committee. He also said city ordinances say the city administrator and his staff would be required to support the committee and its works.

“If there is any members of the current administrative team who feel they will be unwilling or unable to respond to the needs or requests of this standing committee, they should strongly consider moving to another opportunity,” McGill said in his statement.

City Director George Catsavis applauded McGill’s speech, saying people will appreciate that the mayor and directors are on their side.

“I think it’s going to make a big difference with people and the way they perceive city government and the city board,” he said.

City Director Andre Good called the speech smart and heartfelt. He asked directors not to pay lip service to what McGill said.

“If you truly support what he said, show your support by the vote,” he said.

McGill said Friday that it was difficult to pinpoint the source or type of mismanagement he addressed in his speech but something is wrong when such a large number of customers complained about their water bills.

There should have been a more strategic plan in place across all departments to handle complaints when integrating a new system, he said.

City spokesman Karen Santos called it a perfect storm. The city is replacing the water meters for 33,000 water customers. That started Jan. 1, 2018. At the same time, the city implemented new billing software to replace the system the city had used for 39 years.

The switch from the old meters to the new meters and the billing system has been less than seamless, Santos said.

Some customers received unusual bills after their meters were switched because computers reading the data billed for more days in some instances and fewer days in others.

Other customers saw higher water bills because their old meters — some of them decades old — were not correctly recording the amount of water passing through them, Santos said. Many saw an increase in their bills because the new meters measured their water use more accurately.

One customer, Melissa Bonar, said she received a $778.67 water bill Feb. 13, which was more than 10 times her normal bill.

Her bill was $161.48 in January after she received a new meter, she said. She asked that the meter be replaced and had it installed Feb. 8, then received the even higher bill.

She said she dealt with multiple city officials, none of whom would adjust her bill. They told her to call a plumber to check for leaking water pipes on her property.

“I refused to fall into their trap and call a plumber because it was scientifically impossible for me to have a leak of that magnitude and not know it,” she said.

Her March bill reflected her normal water use, she said.

Santos said it is the city’s standing policy that if a person calls a plumber and the plumber finds a leak on the owner’s property and fixes it, the person can take the receipts to the city and the city will adjust the higher use reading to the person’s average use and give the person credit for the difference.

Customer questions and complaints about their water bills because of the transition to the new meters and the billing system resulted in a deluge of phone calls to the city.

Santos said notice was sent out about Thanksgiving that the online billing system would be down for a week while the new system was installed, and that people using online paying would have to reset their autopay with their banks.

When the new system went on line, City Administrator Carl Geffken said in a Jan. 21 news release that many residents had tried to set up their new accounts at the same time. When they encountered problems or had questions, they called the city.

The volume of calls crashed the city’s telephone provider’s lines multiple times, Geffken said in the release.

“It was like a stampede to get it done,” Santos said.

To respond to the large number of calls, the city set up a call center manned by six Utility Department employees answering phones. They responded to hundreds of individual requests for assistance regarding setting up new payment options, or answering individual account questions regarding customers’ bills, the release said.

Last week the city replaced the Utility Department employees in the call center with professional customer service representatives, Santos said.