Baker City finance department employees will have a busy winter trying to fix problems that resulted from changes the city made in 2023 to its water billing system.

City Manager Barry Murphy, who was hired in December 2023, after the changes were made, said on Thursday, Oct. 31, that the situation is “disappointing” and “really frustrating.”

“The status quo is not acceptable,” Murphy said.

He talked to city councilors about the issue during their Oct. 8 meeting.

All seven councilors were appointed in late 2023, after the billing system was altered in June of that year.

The changes

In June 2023 the city shifted utility billing to its new software system through the Caselle company, Murphy said.

At the same time, the city changed its billing plan to an “averaging” system. Each customer’s monthly water bill (which are combined with sewer charges) was based on the total usage for the previous 12 months, ending June 30, 2023, then divided by 12.

Other utilities offer customers the option of averaging their bills. The idea is to avoid the peaks and valleys in bills that result from seasonal changes in usage, Murphy said.

With water, some people use considerably more water during the summer, to irrigate their lawns and gardens, than during the winter.

By calculating an average based on the previous year’s usage, the bill is the same amount each month.

In addition to that change, the city reduced the number of times each water meter is read from four times each year to three.

In the past, the city billed customers based on their actual usage during the summer, when employees read meters.

During the winter, when snow can cover meters, the city charges all customers the base rate. Customers who exceed the base rate — which includes three 750-gallon units of water — during the winter have that additional cost added to their first bill each spring when meters are read.

The change caused two problems, Murphy said.

First, the Caselle software was not designed for average billing, and it was not properly set up to account for the reduction in the number of meter readings, Murphy said.

Second, residents no longer can track their water usage because that figure is not printed on the monthly bill as it used to be.

“Without water usage information customers are unable to track their usage to discover leaks,” Murphy wrote in a report to councilors for the Oct. 8 meeting.

In the past, a leak would have been apparent much sooner, he said.

Also, a customer who significantly reduces water usage won’t see the benefit, on the bill, until the next year when the average is recalculated, Murphy said.

The overall result, he said, was a rash of complaints from customers.

“Customers do not have enough information on their water bill to understand how their bill is calculated and it is difficult for the finance staff to explain,” Murphy wrote in the report to councilors.

Revenue decline

Frustration among residents hasn’t been the only effect from the 2023 changes, though, Murphy said.

The city’s water bill revenue has dropped by a few hundred thousand dollars, he said.

That has no immediate effects, Murphy said.

The water fund, which is separate from the general fund, which includes the police and fire departments, started the current fiscal year on July 1 with $3.2 million.

The city collected about $3 million from water sales in the previous fiscal year.

Murphy said it appears that multiple factors contributed to the decline in revenue, including a glitch with the Caselle software in which some water accounts weren’t transferred from the previous software, meaning those accounts weren’t billed.

Meter readers also apparently missed some meters, Murphy said.

He said it’s not clear how the city will try to recoup money from customers who used water but weren’t properly billed.

Fixing the problems

Murphy said his goal is to return to the previous billing system, with bills based on actual usage from the most recent meter reading. That’s scheduled to start in the spring of 2025, when workers resume reading meters after the winter.

The short-term priority is to include water usage data on monthly bills. Murphy said that is tentatively scheduled to start with December bills.

“Our customers need to see what they’re actually using, regardless of how it’s billed,” he said.

Murphy said the goal is to continue using Caselle software for utility billing. But he said the city will consider a different software if problems remain while using Caselle.