Almost 400 Baker City residents will get refunds from the city because they were overcharged for their water use.

And about 550 others who were undercharged will see an increase in their bills.

Jeanie Dexter, the city’s finance director, told city councilors during their meeting Tuesday, May 13, that she and other city employees have finished reconciling water bills to fix a problem created in 2023 when a previous city council changed the water billing system.

In June 2023, when the city switched software, it also 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. 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 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, which includes three 750-gallon units of water. Customers who exceed the base rate  during the winter have that additional cost added to their first bill each spring when meters are read.)

The change to average billing caused two problems, City Manager Barry Murphy, who started work Jan. 1, 2024, after the change had been made, told councilors last fall.

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. That resulted in the city overcharging some customers and undercharging others.

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

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.

The city was also bringing in less money from water bills in the past.

Dexter told councilors on Tuesday that 553 accounts were underbilled for a total of about $70,000.

Another 393 accounts had the opposite situation, and the city will refund a total of $21,000 for those mistaken billings, Dexter said.

The net result for the city is a gain of $49,000 for the water department, she said.

Murphy said that for most of the 553 customers who were undercharged, the amount is relatively small. The average is about $126. Dexter said the city will set up payment schedules for people who ask.

The city has sent letters to all customers regarding the change back to water billing based on actual use.

Dexter said Tuesday that the city will send another letter to customers for whom the underbilling exceeded 100 units of water. At the city’s rate of $1.13 per unit, that amounts to $113.

Murphy told councilors that Dexter and her staff did “an enormous amount of work” to reconcile water bills.

“They did a phenomenal job,” Murphy said.

Dexter said almost all residents she and other city employees have talked with prefer billing based on actual use, rather than the average billing system.