Report shows more than half of Century’s water, sewer, gas customers do not receive bills
At the Century council meeting Monday night, Natural Gas Superintendent Wally Kellett reported that about 268 accounts of at least 530 did not receive bills or were incorrectly read each month, which explains much of the town's lost revenue.
Kellett reported that the gate meter, which measures how much gas comes into the town, is up and running and is parallel with what Gulf South says it is transporting monthly.
“Our training last week went great,” said Kellett. “It was very informative and it was really needed. There were billing issues and accounts that are not being billed, which we discovered in the training, so we are looking into it now. It was over 200 different meters, as far as gas, water and sewer. I think that there will be quite a bit of revenue coming into the town that has been lost every month.”
Kellett went on to describe in detail the discrepancies between the billing and gas reading.
“Some months we bill 480 customers, some months we bill 500 customers, and we should be billing at least 530 gas customers each month. No one could find it. I've looked and looked. It took the three of us at that training, there were about 268 clients, although a few may be duplicates,” said Kellett.
The 268 represents water, gas and sewer clients who were either not billed or not billed accurately each and every month, Kellett said. Councilwoman Ann Brooks asked Kellett how he was able to locate the 268 customers. Kellett said he knew there was an issue, since he was going by different older and newer meter reading routes, finding accounts that were not correct and found there were problems in the water, gas and sewer accounts.
“There were a lot of discrepancies when our mail stuffing machine went down and we were stuffing the bills to get them out,” said Century Mayor Henry Hawkins. “We got them and looked at them, and started questioning, so we pulled them, because they were way too high, or way to low. We went back and read meters again to make sure the meters were where they needed to be. It's in the system somewhere.”
“There are a lot of challenges,” said Kellett. “This did not happen overnight. It's the things you all are doing now that matters. I want Century to be the best it can be, especially the gas department. That's why I was so adamant about going to that training. I wanted questions answered. I knew there were some issues, and we found them.”
Kellett said the town is working to compile a spread sheet of the accounts they found and if they're not being billed or if they are duplicates, they will weed those out, they will be able to supply the council in a few weeks with a report of how many will start being billed that were not before. Kellett said he believes it will be a significant number.
