Today, Baltimore City Department of Public Works, along with the Baltimore City Department of Finance, testified against a City Council resolution recommending a two-year amnesty that would allow property owners with delinquent bills to avoid payment and tax sale.

Alfred H. Foxx, Director of Public Works, opened by stating, “Providing enforcement amnesty to property owners who fail to make any effort to pay long-overdue water bills is not a fiscally sound response to concerns about the current water meter reading and billing systems. Without motivation to pay, increased delinquency rates will impact the revenues supporting our water system and our paying customer will shoulder the burden.”

Public Works has been working to address long-standing meter reading and billing issues with a plan begun more than a year ago. The approach is a systematic one, first, focusing on meter reading to insure accuracy of billing and responsive customer care. Second, the Department has begun implementation of a multi-year upgrade of the meter reading and billing systems city-wide.

Customer Care is happening NOW.

DPW has increased personnel to eliminate severe understaffing for meter reading, investigations and customer care. This has already resulted in actual reads of all meters since April 2011, with the exception of those meters that are inaccessible.

Last year, DPW began a program to locate or replace all interior and exterior buried meters. In these situations, estimated billing has been used to insure that customers receive a bill and keep their account active. That is no longer acceptable as a prolonged solution where meters have been paved over, embedded in gardens or even deliberately hidden.

Last year, to improve meter reading accuracy DPW permanently assigned meter readers to routes to insure maximum familiarity and accountability, reducing mis-assigned reads, skipped reads and other human errors. Accuracy and work quality has improved as a result.

At the same time, DPW has moved aggressively toward a new meter reading and billing system. It will take three to five years to fully implement, but it will mean continuous reads of water usage through a wireless network with information being sent directly to the new billing system. It will also mean that customers can directly monitor their water usage too, right from a computer or smart phone. Weather-related delays in meter reading, transcription mistakes and other human errors will be a thing of the past.

An increase in water and sewer bill delinquencies is anticipated without the tax sale enforcement mechanism in place. In addition to the potential violation of City bond covenants presented by the moratorium, City Departments expressed concern that rating agencies may see the proposed legislative action as a threat to the revenues securing City bonds, which could negatively impact the City’s bond rating. The ability to affordably finance repairs and replacement of aging infrastructure and other necessary improvements could be impacted, driving annual rate increases into the double digits.

The Departments outlined the city’s tax sale process as well as the safety nets in place to prevent a property from entering the tax sale for a water-only lien. Final bills and legal notice are distributed to delinquent account holders in February followed by multiple public notifications and direct letters to affected property owners up until the time of sale in July. With multiple direct notifications, senior and low-income assistance, as well as payment plans, relatively few properties end up in tax sale for a water-only lien.

Director Foxx stated, “The truth is, to end up in tax sale as a result of a water-only lien means a property owner has received water services, accrued charges of more than $350, and failed to make any payment at all for more than three billing quarters – nearly a year. Further, it means the owner has made no attempt to respond to repeated notifications sent by Public Works and Finance asking the customer to make contact to address billing concerns and reconcile their account.”

For more information on the assistance available to customers struggling to pay water bills please contact, Public Works, Bureau of Water and Wastewater, Customer Care at (410) 396-5398 or visit www.baltimorecity.gov

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