By Juliet Kadzviti

P.A. residents ask city why their water bills are sky high

Jun 28, 2016 | 7:00 PM

Several residents have asked the city to get to the bottom of why their water bills are so high.

Council met for their regular meeting on Monday June 27 and asked city staff why residents have been receiving higher than average water bills.

Councillor Don Cody said a resident in his ward told him she was surprised to find she had a water bill of roughly $615, almost three times more than her average bill of about $200.

Cody said the resident hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary for her bill to be so high.

“There’s only two people living in their home, they don’t ever water the lawn. She says they have lived in the house now for two years,” he said.

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Cody said the resident approached the city, who replaced her meter, monitored it for 10 days and concluded something was wrong with her old meter. He said she was still charged $100 for her troubles.

“Well, the meter doesn’t belong to her it belongs to us and so we are going to ask her for a $100 to check our meter, doesn’t seem quite cricket to me,” he said.

Steve Brown, director of financial services, told council the city doesn’t typically charge residents for faulty meters.

“If the meter turns out to be defective and it’s our fault, they (residents) don’t incur a dime, but if it turns out to be a valid meter then the onus is on the homeowner to prove that they don’t have a leak in their system,” he said.

Mayor Greg Dionne said the city has recently received an increase in complaints (about 10 in one week) but was working to figure out why bills are so high.

“In most cases they (meters) just weren’t read right,” he said. “Now that we are looking into it, these were people who had (bill) estimates… most of them are being straightened out now.”

Dionne said the billing system isn’t without problems.

“When you send out as many bills a year as we do, you’re gonna have some errors, no system is perfect and I think most of the people understand (that),” he said.

julietkadzviti@panow.com

On Twitter: @princealbertnow