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A recent question by a customer of the Williamsport Municipal Water and Sanitary Authority about her bill being $10 more offered an opportunity for the authority management to explain its billing procedures.
"We follow industry standards and round up or down to the nearest 1,000 gallons of water and 1,000 gallons of sewer use," said Michael Miller, authority executive director. With him was Wendy Walter, authority director of compliance.
For water, that is $6.75, and for sewer, that is $13.85 per 1,000 gallons.
When the authority customer called the Sun-Gazette saying she received a bill of $20 and when she called authority customer service she was told "they rounded the bill up."
The customer wanted to know what "rounded the bill up" meant.
"If she is trying to make a case that we are overcharging her by consistently rounding up, that is not accurate," Miller said.
"The meter does not reset so you may get rounded up to the nearest 1,000 for that monthly reading," he said.
However, next month's reading will reconcile the rounding by giving credit for those gallons which have already been paid," he said.
Real numbers as examples
Walter further clarified his point.
If that particular customer uses 4,000 gallons per quarterly billing cycle (every 3 months), in a monthly (1 month) billing cycle, the customer might receive a bill for 1,000 gallons for the first month. On the second month, he or she might get a bill for 1,000 gallons, and on the third month it might be a bill for 2,000 gallons of usage, she said.
"You do not necessarily get the same bill each month, as one month will account for the extra usage," Walter said, explaining that terminology. Miller added: "The quarterly usage remains the same, but very simply, four thousand is not equally divisible by three."
"Further, the authority administrative fee is not new nor has it increased. It remains $10 per quarter since Jan. 1, 2015. To account for monthly billing, simply take the old rate of $10 a quarter and divide it by three for $3.33 a month," Miller said.
To account for due dates, the authorities continue to enter mailed payments by the date of the postmark.
"We have had significant difficulty with mail arriving timely," Miller said. "A lot of the local mail goes through Harrisburg and seems to arrive only on one or two days out of the week."
However, the authorities do not penalize customers on when the mail arrives because they use the postmark date from when the payment is first mailed.