BILLINGS - Billings resident Avery Johnson says she couldn’t believe it when she opened her most recent City of Billings public utilities bill.
“That is most of my paycheck,” said Johnson. “I have no idea how I am going to do it.”
Johnson’s most recent water statement was as high as $975, in light of a 60 day period billed out by the city, although a city of Billings spokesperson says part of that bill was a balance forward.
However, Johnson is questioning how that could be, as she’s a single woman living alone in her home.
“My May to June bill was $325 dollars, that was to be expected…”
To be expected because Johnson says she was filling up her backyard pool in May, but when she called the city for an explanation they told her she had a leak.
But Johnson says there’s no way that’s possible.
"She asked me to do the dye test in the toilet, and nothing, they are new toilets I would hear a leak,” she said. “I have been in the crawl space I have looked everywhere.”
Looking for answers, she posted her frustration to social media and found hundreds of other Billings city residents were also experiencing oddly high water bills, chiming in with stories of their own high bills.
“A lot of people are going through the same thing,” she said.
But Billings city administrator Chris Kukulski says there’s an explanation for the high water bills: high usage.
He says the city saw a 29 percent increase in water consumption
“The problem is we had two very wet summers, and this year has been a very hot dry summer,” said Kukulski.
Kukulski as well as the Deputy Director for Public Works, Jennifer Duray remain adamant all the bills are correct.
“We are working with anyone and everyone on a payment because all of this is exacerbated by the fact that people did not generally receive a June bill,” he said.
However, they do admit something in this process did go wrong.
“We haven’t had any issues with the accuracy of reading meters, nothing changed, but this transition to this new billing system has absolutely been a bear, and that has caused all the problems,” said Kukulski.
The city admits the mess is caused by the vendor hired to do the transition work.
According to the city, that vendor is having software programming issues pulling data from the old system to the new system, something that was supposed to get underway in February, but problems delayed it.
“They delay from February put us to here, and in hindsight, if we thought we were going to have these issues we wouldn’t have gone,” he said. “This was never driven by a problem of accurately billing people."
Duray maintains there was no change in meters or meter software.
However, Johnson and other residents aren’t buying it.
“There’s something wrong, they just switched to this new system, and then all of a sudden all of these problems for everyone?” said Johnson. “Everyone has a leak? Where is that water coming from?”
Additional details on water bills from the city are listedhere.
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