Submetering

When Jim and I arrived at Butler Creek, water meters had been installed on each home and read a few times. It was pretty apparent from which homes the majority of our $8,000+ water bill was coming! Customers who had huge water usage were given written notice telling them that their water bill would be XXX dollars at the current reading.

Our first "real" reading was on September 20. That reading got sent to our billing company and bills sent to tenants. We had made the offer to each tenant, renter or homeowner, that our maintenance staff would fix any water leaks during the month of September at no cost to them. We also lowered everyone's lot rent by $15 per month to offset water costs.

The first bills ranged from $7 and change to over $300! Some of the people with smaller bills brought them in the park office with questions. Some of the people with larger bills NEVER asked or said anything about these huge bills, even though we were expecting it. It was amazing how many argumentative people we had whose bills were under the $15!

The bills our residents received were on nasty little yellow postcards - in our opinion very likely to be considered junk mail. The printing on the postcard was incredibly small and difficult to read. We requested the company bill on full-size paper for the following month, for an added fee, of course.

The second month of reading meters proved to be quite difficult. It was pouring out all day and need I say that I was incredibly wet and cold? It takes over 3 hours to read all the meters in the community, and there was no choice but to drive from home to home to do it or the paper would never have survived. (Our reader requires us to write down each reading as we take it - no storage of information.)

We have just read the meters for the third time. So far we have received one check from the billing company. Our water bill has dropped to $6,500, which is a drastic improvement in expense.

This is what I would do differently:

1. I would not reduce park rent to compensate for water. Some people have yet to pay a water bill but definitely took the decrease in rent!

2. I would not offer to fix homeowner's leaks. It was difficult to arrange a time to get our guys to their homes, and some thought we would just come LOOK for leaks. They were not really happy when I told them I was not going to have them crawling under their home just in case they had a leak.

3. I would have given them a definite date of the first meter read for which they were billed.

4. I would have purchased a reader that stored information or had the company read the meters. According to them, we are the only park reading our own meters. The downside to purchasing a different reader, I am told, is that they are incredibly expensive.

Do we think water should be sub-metered? Absolutely. At the Arrow Woods park Jim talked with the City, we install the meters and they now read them and bill our tenants direct. One good thing about this is that the City can cut off water for non-payment. Another good thing is that once a meter is taken over by the city for homes brought in the park they also take ownership of the meter and are responsible for all future repairs to the meter.

We were lucky at Arrow Woods. The public utility at Butler Creek would not read/bill the water. We had no choice but to go to an outside billing company or do it ourselves. We did both - they bill, we read.

I am expecting to start eviction proceedings on some tenants in January, which gives them a full 3 months to pay water bills. Anyone who has not yet paid the first bill and probably the second will be served.

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