“A Perfect Storm” on water meter misreads in Kennedale reports ST

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As water bills went out this month in Kennedale, approximately 200 customers got the shock of their lives according to the Star Telegram in an article printed in today’s issue. {{more: continue …}}

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For a few of the unlucky 200, their monthly bill soar upward to over a million dollars.?

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The Kennedale News reposted information provided by Mayor Brian Johnson Wednesday in an article – City

of Kennedale ? Update on recent issues with water billing.? ?

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In the Star Telegram today, Lakeita Sutton, Director of Finance and Information Technology for the City of Kennedale is quoted as calling it a “perfect storm of things.” The end result of that? storm was that out of 3,200 water meters in the city, 200 were misread.?

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In the article Sutton describes the issues that Kennedale faced this month and the problems that resulted and the correction taken to prevent it from happening again.

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?Read the full Star Telegram article written by BY ELIZABETH CAMPBELL?at Some

residents got water bills over $1 million in this city near Fort Worth.?

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The following is part of the article from the Star Telegram …

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Lakeita Sutton, director of finance and information technology, said Kennedale is in the process of shifting its billing to Arlington after its contract ended with Fathom Water Management, a company that went out of business last fall.

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Kennedale already has a partnership with Arlington to handle its water operations and is in a transition of shifting the city?s billing to Arlington, Sutton said.

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The billing transition to Arlington was to be completed by June, she said.

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In the meantime, Kennedale was using another company, Munibilling, to handle the water bills and a company called Aclara to read the meters.

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Then, in February, Aclara informed Kennedale that it was no longer going to read the meters, she said.

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Kennedale contacted Arlington to read the meters, but Kennedale is not on Arlington?s system to read the meters yet, so they were read manually, Sutton said. When the information was sent to Munibilling some of the readings showed the decimal point in the wrong place, she said.

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?When the problem was discovered on Saturday, Arlington reread the meters and got the reading corrected,? Sutton said.

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There were 3,200 meters and 200 were read incorrectly, she said.

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?It was just the perfect storm of things. My team has been working all weekend to come up with a strategy to help Arlington troubleshoot,? she said.

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?This caused an undue hardship for our residents,? she said.?

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