One bad meter reader caused headaches for the city.
The meter reader made up numbers for more than 150 customers in the Ridge Pointe neighborhood for at least six months.
Eric Parker in the water and sewer department said the meter reader, who was fired after being found out, did check all the meters at least once.
"And then he had the initial starting read to go by," Parker said. "And then from month to month, if the read was 300, for example, he could make it 305."
The made-up numbers underreported water usage, and when a different city department suddenly corrected the readings, customers’ bills shot up dramatically in January.
Monica Wright in utility services said they could have handled it differently.
"We didn't hold those bills, and we didn't allow enough time — because of the magnitude of the situation, we did not allow enough time to get a plan in place and go through approvals and coordinate with communications so that we were out in front of this before the bills reached the homes," Wright said.
Affected customers can pay their bills, some of which were 30 times higher than normal, over the entire year.
Water and Sewer Director Clayton Edwards said plastic chips are a low-tech way to stop meter readers from making up numbers.
"If a meter reader comes across this, he's supposed to take this and bring it back, so this is kind of a check on a meter reader actually reading a meter," Edwards said, holding up a green chip. "We've increased the frequency and number of these we do periodically throughout the system."
The water and sewer department is also rotating readers’ routes.
