Met with the Mayor and members of the DPW today.  They agreed that moving forward they would do a smoothing analysis, share a photo of the last meter read and communicate the payment options upfront to all residents.  The City is giving residents an interest free loan for a year or you can face a lien on your property.  If you can not make good during that time frame, they will deduct the balance when you sell your home.

I learned that the City did attempt to go after the water meter manufacturer when the meters stopped transponding in 2019 but the company eventually went bankrupt so they didn't get anywhere. 

The city officials refuse to acknowledge any responsibility in the overage charges and justified the higher HCF rates through their ambitious capital investments in upgrading 320 miles of water and sewer pipes from the 1890s.  The plan is to continue to increase water and sewer rates by 3.9% indefinitely.

I kept saying to them that if the demand is so much higher than what they estimated, they should be able to lower the HCF rates in line with other communities and if people understood how much more they were consuming over the last four years, they might have consumed less.  This was lost on them...

On to the city council...