While the city of Bonney Lake is still analyzing data from hundreds of residents’ water meters, an update was released last week announcing city staff have found no discrepancies so far.
During the Oct. 10 City Council meeting, dozens of residents piled into the council chamber to complain about their water bills, saying they’ve doubled or even tripled in cost without using any more water than usual.
On top of that, residents were also upset the city was considering a 4 percent and 4.5 percent utility rate hike for water and sewer respectively.
Since the early October meeting, Bonney Lake has been collecting and examining meter data to see if there’s any flaw in their water utility system.
In a Nov. 2 press release, City Administrator Don Morrison said, “Consumption patterns are consistent with the same summer spikes in usage that we have seen year after year…. At this point, we are continuing to follow the meter reading and billing process through to ensure the meters are being read correctly as well as that the information from the meter reading equipment uploads properly into the billing software.”
The city has finished examining bill information, and determined the plurality of residents (39 percent) were billed less than $100 during the summer billing cycle.
Around 34 percent of residents had bills between $101 and $200, and around 17 percent had bills between $201 and $300.
5 percent of residents had bills between $301 and $400, and 2 percent of residents had bills between $401 and $500 and $501 to $1,000 respectively. Less than 1 percent of residents had bills over $1,000.
“We are getting a lot of questions about ‘why did my bill double’,” Morrison said in the release. “You are only billed for your consumption every other month, which means you are being billed for two months of consumption.”
Along with the release, the city included links to help residents read their utility bills and track their water usage.
Mayor Neil Johnson said earlier he hopes to have all meter data collected by mid-November.
