Robbinsville council weighs changes to water-bill corrections after spike cases

Robbinsville Town Council members spent the longest portion of their meeting reviewing how the town corrects erroneous water bills after meter work and service changes.

Town staff described the meter changeover to new electronic meters and said when a new meter is installed they generally bill from the new meter readings. Staff said they consult maintenance staff (identified in discussion as Chad) when high readings appear; if air was pushed through a line the town may average prior usage or, in some cases, revert accounts to the base rate.

“That's because the new meter is calculating where the old one wasn't working,” a town staff member said, explaining higher bills after meter replacement. A resident pointed to a dramatic example, saying she had seen a bill as high as $46,000; staff replied that that charge was tied to an old meter and was handled after consulting maintenance and applying adjustments.

Council members asked how the town determines corrective formulas. One council member said averaging the past 12 months may not be reliable if past readings were incorrect and asked whether reverting to base rate would be fairer in some cases. Another council member supported switching to base rate for large anomalies: “I'd go base rate,” the member said during debate.

The council made a motion on the record to adopt a practice favoring base rate corrections in certain situations and directed staff to prepare recommendations and legal or policy language for a future meeting. The motion was recorded in the discussion but no roll-call vote appears in the transcript.

Members also discussed the town's leak-credit policy and late-credit limits, including whether commercial and residential accounts receive equitable treatment and how many leak credits are allowed per account per year. Staff said one leak-credit is applied to the affected billing period(s) and that additional incidents are evaluated if they occur more than a year apart.

Separately, the board reviewed a longstanding practice that requires a $150 deposit and a $55 connection fee when a service is established or the account name is changed; residents asked the council to reconsider waiving or altering that fee for long-term or uninterrupted customers. Council asked staff to bring policy options and recommended language back to the board.

The council instructed staff to assemble proposed policy revisions, clarifying detail on how corrections would be calculated and under what conditions the base-rate approach would apply. The matter will return to the council for further action.