by John M. O’Hara

The recent snafus at the city’s water department that have caused many in Somerville to receive inordinately high water bills of late, are still without a detailed explanation. 

Overall, about 4,000 people received water bills that were higher than normal, said Mark Horan, the mayor’s communications director. 

Much of the problem may have been caused by a computer software malfunction at the water Department.  Ti-Sales, the software company that maintains the department’s system is trying to untangle the problem, Horan said.

Another contributing factor was that there was only one person reading meters from December through February, Horan said.

With another meter-reader hired at some point in February, there are now two meter-readers in the city.  The record snowfall also hampered the efforts of the lone meter-reader this winter, he said.

Many of the residents, who received bills that were higher-than-normal, were billed for longer than the customary 90-day billing period, he said.

Some may have been billed for up to 150 days, he said.

Because Somerville charges residents for water on an ascending rate structure, the more water that an individual account consumes, the more that each unit of water will cost.  Of those that received suspect water bills, the percentage of which that were over-charged is yet to be determined, he said.

Some of the suspect bills may have simply been sent our later and accounted for a longer time frame of water consumption.  In this case, there would not have been any over-charge, just more usage measured in a single bill, he said.

Some of the suspect bills, however, may have been over-charged in that after the customary 90-day billing period had ended, the rate for individual account consumption was not shifted back to the beginning rate bracket, but charged at the higher rate, he said.

“I can’t speak to what percentage was overcharged, but they think that it’s virtually no one,” said Horan.  “I know that part of the problem was the snow season, and part of it was the software.”

The city is trying to remedy the issue as soon as possible, Horan said.  When it is determined who was actually overcharged, they will receive remuneration in the form of an account credit.  At this point it is unlikely that individual’s with erroneous water bills will be credited with interest, he said.

Horan said the exact amount of additional money that the water department took in is still in question, as the computer issues have yet to be resolved.     The city has a three-year goal for converting all Somerville Water Department customer’s meters to the electronic kind that can be read through radio waves outside of the customer’s house, he said.

With more customers paying accurate bills the whole department will be more efficient and able to increase its revenue and there will be no additional cost to ratepayers for the upgrade, he said.