I’m going to start off this post by telling all City of Appleton property owners that they can sign up for an AquaHawk account here: https://www.appleton.org/residents/water/customer-portal
Based on what I observed in this meeting, it sounds like something you should strongly consider as it will help you monitor you monthly water usage and is an important step that needs to have been taken should you ever need to request an adjustment to your water utility bill.
The Utilities Committee met 02/08/2022. Committee Chair Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2) was present as were committee members Alderpersons Michael Smith (District 10) and Chad Doran (District 15). Alderpersons Joe Martin (District 4) and Maiyoua Thao (District 7) were excused, but Alderperson Martin did make it to the meeting at some and was able to vote.
The item that took up the majority of the meeting was consideration and discussion of the request from Appleton property owner and landlord Abby for a credit adjustment for water use between May 29, 2021 and June 11, 2021 of $65.98. When I first read the agenda materials, I was surprised that the adjustment request was for only $65.98 because that was far less than the $1,660.00 she had been billed for, but that was quickly explained.
Alderperson Smith moved to approve the credit adjustment as a procedural matter to get it on the table, and Alderperson Meltzer seconded it.
Abby then addressed the committee and said that she was not asking for $65 but for considerably more. The $65.98 had been determined by the city’s Finance Department based off of city rules and not based on Abby’s request.
The original packet of supplemental agenda materials had included a timeline of account activity. Abby had what she believed to be a more accurate and updated timeline which she provided to the committee.
She went on to explain that by her estimates, 4 years’ worth of water consumption for an average household had run directly through her toilet and straight down the drain before she was notified by the city and had the ability to correct the problem. The two periods on the timeline that were the quarters under review were the February through April and then May through June which was when the leak was corrected.
She had been told that the consumption rate had to hit 50 gallons per hour to trigger a notification and another document listed 30 gallons as the threshold. Either way, that consumption rate had to be for 5 consecutive days. If for one hour that threshold was not hit then the 5-day timeframe completely resets.
“Because occasionally it didn’t hit those 30 gallons, it kept resetting. I was provided consumption showing that just from May through June 11th the bill had hit nearly $1,000. [I’m] Still very much questioning why it is so high. One of the reasons we weren’t able to get this corrected is because of a policy that was, I’m assuming, implemented that was in your attachments. Your water leakage policy absolves, I guess, Appleton Public Works of any responsibility for the most part here and puts 100% of responsibility and blame onto the tenant or the customer I should say, and I shouldn’t use the term tenant because it eventually is gonna hit my shoulders. That the customer had to have an active water customer portal set up—essentially AquaHawk. So, because the customer didn’t have AquaHawk set up, they were therefore responsible for the charges. They refused to pay the charges, so therefore I am now responsible for the charges and I have no ability to set up AquaHawk on my properties by myself.”
The feedback she had received from the city was that everybody should be aware of AquaHawk, but she could not find a single Appleton resident who knew about it. Although she acknowledged that could have simply been the result of the pole she took, she still highly questioned the percentage of Appleton customers that had AquaHawk set up. [I have to admit, I had never heard about AquaHawk until I read the agenda materials for this meeting.]
Abby did not think the communication she had received regarding AquaHawk made it clear that Appleton was no longer responsible to inform people about water leaks.
She said there were a couple reasons as to why it took so long to get this credit adjustment request before the Utilities Committee. She had misspelled the email address of the Kelly in the Finance Department she was trying to contact, and, although she had CCed Alderperson Matt Reed (District 8) on the email, he had failed to respond to any of the emails he had been copied on.
In the period of time between May, 29 2021 when the utility department became aware of the leak to June 11, 2021 when Abby received the letter informing her of the leak, the amount of water wasted was over 42,000 gallons. By her average household usage that was 2 years’ worth of water that went right down the toilet.
Currently she had a payment plan and was working on the payments, but she was incredibly disappointed in the lack of customer service she had received. She felt that the leak got to a severe and outrageous level before she was made aware of it. She noted that when she had had a tenant who didn’t pay their water bill it only took the city two days to notify her, but when she had a $1,600 leak it took them 11 days.
She then laid out the requests to the committee.
“So, I’m here today asking you guys for a couple of things. One, I would like you to help me out with this bill. I think there is some responsibility on Appleton Public Works and Utilities, and I would be more than willing to help. I’ve already identified that your initial communication system doesn’t address landlords, while, at the same time, your process is to put the responsibility on the landlords if the tenant doesn’t pay. Therefore, I think you should have that. Clearly you know how to get ahold of landlords because when my tenant doesn’t pay you get me in letter right away telling them that they’re deficient. So, there’s already a system that seems to be in place there.
“Secondly, for the 11-12 days I would like those 43,000 gallons worth of water taken off my bill. I think—I’m not saying I’m not gonna pay the rest. I think that would be a fair amount of responsibility for Appleton to take on, given the amount of work that it has taken for me just to get here. I certainly would never want another Appleton citizen to have to go through this.
“So, then my last request is how do we change the notification process? Ideally, one, I think the AquaHawk system is a great system. I’m an operations major. If there is an error proofing process, I think that’s fantastic. But if the customers are unaware of it and it’s not implemented, who’s taking the initiative to ensure that the communication is driving home? Ironically, [I’ve] also worked in marketing. I was a senior associate brand manager on Pull-Ups. If I had a new innovation on Pull-Ups that no customer knew about, I would be fired. So, if the customers aren’t aware of AquaHawk, then our communication system is severely flawed and should be improved as well. And maybe there should be some sort of a better threshold that, at some point, four years’ worth of water consumption shouldn’t be gone down the toilet before we make an adjustment.”
Deputy Director of Public Works Nathan Loper then addressed the committee. He said Abby had brought up some great points and questions, and he would do his best to address those while also giving some background to the committee, alderpersons, and anyone else listening.
The water utility needed to follow the rules and regulations set forth by the Public Service Commission (PSC). The Appleton Water Utility could not make rules more or less strict without the PSC’s approval. That was what led to the creation of the Water Leak Policy. That policy was put together through the efforts of city staff and the Common Council and approved by the PSC.
The PSC requires utilities to treat every situation the same, so they are not able to give credit to one customer for something if they are not doing the same for someone else. The need for consistency was the reason they created the Water Leak policy.
Regarding monitoring accounts for high usage, the PSC does not require utilities to do that or to notify customers. Appleton’s water utility chose to do that. The invested in the AquaHawk system and receive alerts on their end. They have the ability for customers to get alerts. They try to advertise the existence of the AquaHawk system as much as their budget allows, but they don’t have a marketing budget like a big company would have. They did put it in three months’ worth of water bills when the system first became available, it’s in every Public Works Guide, and they post about it on Facebook once or twice a year. Every time they have a customer contact during a meter call, they try to educate the customers about AquaHawk and convince people to sign up. He said about 15% of customers used the system, and that was more than what AquaHawk had told them they would probably get. They had been pretty aggressive in getting the word out. It wasn’t for lack of an effort that people were not signing up. He said some people were maybe just choosing not to under a situation like this presented itself.
Regarding this specific property and this leak, it was a 1,000 square foot house with one bathroom. According to utility records, the leak had been going on for several months before it was repaired. In fact, several bills reflected that increase, so it wasn’t a sudden surprise. In talking with the owner, it sounded like the toilet had been leaking for quite some time. “So, one toilet, one bathroom in a smaller home, it would be really obvious that there was a leak. So, it wasn’t like a surprise. And we’ve had surprises come to us in the past where maybe it’s a vacant property and somebody hasn’t been there for a month or two and they have a $10,000 water bill that happened, like, literally overnight. This is something that had been going on for several months that could have been fixed had the tenant mentioned something.”
This leak didn’t hit their 24-hour high usage alert parameters because, like a lot of toilet leaks, the flapper on the toilet might leak for a while and then all of a sudden seal itself, stopping the leak, but then somebody flushes the toilet and it doesn’t seal right and the leak starts again.
He said they have some internal reports that they don’t have to do but choose to do. With those they get notified of some of the bigger leaks, but they have to valance available staff because they don’t have the staff needed to chase down all of these leaks although there are employees who would love to do that. He said employees feel terrible when these things happen but they’re spread so thin they can’t monitor everything and they can’t go door-to-door. That’s why the developed the criteria that if this threshold was hit, they would send a letter. If they loosened up the parameters any more, they would get hundreds or thousands of these reports due to people doing a lot of laundry, filling a pool, or watering their lawn.
He said that the PSC does “require us to treat everything the same, so if this credit is approved…we’re gonna be opening the door for others which then becomes an equity issue because all of the other customers and their utility—your constituents—they’ll have to pitch in to pay for these leaks. So, the thousands of dollars that went down this toilet it wasn’t any of the other customers’ fault. They had no control over it, and they’re gonna end up footing the bill. It’s not like the city just has this extra money in the budget where we pay this. It has to come out of the bottom line for the water utility. All the other customers have to pay for it. So even though we feel bad in these situations and, you know, I feel for Abby and her tenant. We need to follow the PSC regulations and policies which is why…we’re recommending that this be denied.”
Alderperson Meltzer, the chairperson of the committee, asked if anyone else had any comments.
Kelli Rindt, the accounting manager for Appleton’s water utility, wanted to clarify how the credit that was being recommended had been determined. It was for the time when the leak was first discovered on May 29 through June 11 when it was fixed. The city had three tiers of water rates and they are allowed to go down to the lowest tier of $4.68 instead of using the $6.08 that would have normally been used.
Abby said she was still confused about that because there was 42-43,000 gallons of water used in that time. In August of 2020 the water bill was $162 which was in the normal range. In November is was $157 which was also normal. In February it was $287 which was higher but it was a quarterly bill and she didn’t think one could assume a customer would have memorized what their last bill was or consider that increase extreme enough. [Honestly, I didn’t buy that argument. I think a lot of people would notice a $100+ increase in their water bill.]
She noted that the $660 bill came on June 13, after she had received the letter notifying her of the water leak, so she got bombarded with a massive bill and the water leak all at the same time.
She went on to say, “Also, I don’t know who here had schooling on knowing what a water leak to listen for? Please, who went to school and was taught to listen for a water leak? Right? At what point in your life did somebody teach you to do that?
“On top of it, this woman had a miscarriage, just had the boyfriend leave because of the miscarriage, has two other kids. Needless to say, already provided her notice to me that she had left and found a cheaper, more affordable place and was behind on rent.
“So, I realize my push with all of these rules and regulations—and never once is it the customer first, it is always Appleton Utilities first or PSC or whatever it is. It’s clearly a bunch of rules and regulations dictated by a monopoly that doesn’t care about the customer. Not at all.
“And what I didn’t hear in any of this is ‘Here’s what we could do going forward’, ’cause that’s one of my primary asks. How do we ensure this never happens to another customer? There’s a number of automated systems here. If you are able to notify me when my customer is two days late on a bill there has to be a better methodology here. So, what can we do? And I have a ton of time invested in this, that—nobody should have to go through what I’ve gone through.
“I realize that thousands and hundreds and thousands of reports we can’t do. The question is, are we sure those are the numbers? It’s easy to say ‘oh, no, we let one do it.’ How many customers do you think have the time, resources, and ability to go through months and months and months of back and forth with Kelly and your meter readers and digging into it and will stand here in front of you? I highly doubt that if you would grant an exception for this one that you would ever have anybody back here, especially if you adjust your processes and your procedures. Hopefully that you would never have to go to this again.”
Alderperson Meltzer opened the discussion for the committee members.
Alderperson Doran asked if they could run through the steps in the water leak policy and wanted to know if all of the steps for asking for a credit adjustment had been followed or if they were not all checked off
Deputy Director Loper answered that the one step that was not checked off was there to have been an AquaHawk account established before the leak. He also noted that they hadn’t tested the meter because there hadn’t been a need, but they could do that.
He said he and Kelli had been authorized to make decisions based on the water leak policy, and there have been many credit adjustment requests. Some had received credit because they met all of the conditions of the policy. Others have not.
He thought this credit adjustment request was the first one to come to the committee since the policy was adopted and approved by PSC. The lack of the AquaHawk account was the trigger that prompted them to not allow the approval.
Kelli had, however, been able to put in a credit adjustment for the time between when the utility department realized there was a leak and when Abby had received the letter. But that credit was based on the amount allowable by PSC.
Alderperson Doran appreciated that answer and said, “It is an unfortunate situation. These are hard things. No one wants to see this happen. No one wants to see it happen to someone else. But in my mind, these policies are important and they’re there for a reason. And I—you know, as much as I feel for the situation involved here—I think we set a really bad precedent if we’re going against the policy that we have that clearly spells out the conditions that need to be met for giving a bill credit adjustment in a case like this. And if those aren’t all met, in my mind I can’t support giving an adjustment for that reason. So, I’ll be voting no on this.”
Abby answered, “Can I just correct one thing? I couldn’t possibly set up AquaHawk on this property. So, you’ve given a process and procedure for something I couldn’t do.”
Alderperson Meltzer told her they would continue the discussion among the committee members for now.
Alderperson Smith wanted to know why landlords could set up AquaHawk account for their rental properties.
Kelli answered that her understand was that landlords could do that. They would have to call the city and get the customer number if the bill was in the tenant’s name. They would also have to set up a new account any time the tenant changed. A landlord is entitled to any information they need on a customer’s utility account.
Alderperson Smith also wanted to know why Abby had been notified so quickly when a tenant didn’t pay their bill but so slowly for the water leak.
Deputy Director Loper said that the letter went out at the worst possible time when the post office had been having severe mail delays. The city sent the letter out the day they were notified of the leak, but the timing of delivery by the post office was outside of their control. Beyond that, for that particular tenant, the only contact information they had was the mailing address, so they had no other way to contact anyone. He also noted that the late payment notices were handled by the Finance Department not the Department of Public Works.
Kelli said lay payment notices are system driven. They’re done once a month on the accounts and then are sent out roughly 5-7 days after the due date, and then again, the next month if the bill is still not paid.
Alderperson Smith asked if landlords received copies of the water bill for their rental property.
Kelli said that their system only allows for the bill to go to the customer. They are required by law, though, to notify the property owner if the bill is not paid, hence the notices that come out about 5-7 days after the bill is late and then again, the next month.
Alderperson Smith asked if the city’s system could be adopted to send out duplicate statements and if she was aware of municipalities that send duplicate bills and if there was software that allowed that to happen.
Kelly answered that the current billing system the city used did not allow for duplicate bills to be sent out; however, landlords were welcome to call at any point to get information on their tenant’s accounts. Her understanding was that there are other municipalities that do allow for duplicate bills to be sent and noted that eventually Appleton would be transitioning to the Tyler Munis utility billing system but that was still a few years out.
Alderperson Meltzer was concerned about the education that had been provided to the public about AquaHawk and the perception that landlords couldn’t use the system and wondered what sort of education for landlords had been provided to get them to implement AquaHawk.
Deputy Director Loper said the education for landlords was the same as for everybody. The city was sending this information to anybody who owns property. “There’s so many things that go into managing a property and for the city to be responsible for educating a property owner on everything would be probably exhausting and we would never have the resources to do it.”
He said they could look at what they could do with landlords. Perhaps there were some mailing lists or some kind of association that many landlords belong to that they could share this information with.
He reiterated that they had been pushing this information out number times a year and said that the water bills state right on the back that water leaks are the sole responsibility of the property owner.
He finished up by saying, “we thought we were doing everything we can, but, sure, we could find ways to do better.”
Alderperson Meltzer was concerned that only 15% of customers were using AquaHawk. “That seems really low to me regardless of what Aquahawk might have said about their expectations. If we’re getting so many customer contacts about water leaks and about water usage that we have to set these thresholds to control it, it seems like increasing the percentage of people using AquaHawk would really be able to resolve this issue in a much more holistic way. I feel like maybe this incident that we’re faced with today, maybe this can prompt us to start some kind of really aggressive outreach to get more people to implement AquaHawk, ’cause I’m not really sure what other solution we have in this situation. I’m glad to hear that landlords can set up AquaHawk for their properties, but I’m still a bit confused about how the landlord would know that they can do that and how they would basically be able to be engaged in that process over the course of one tenant switching over to another. And [it] just seems like there’s a—it seems like that’s an area that there’s a lot of room for improvement. We do have to really be careful with following the Public Service Commission’s regulations. And putting the cost of the bill onto the other customers is a really big concern. I would like to waive this because I feel like there’s just been such a mess of communication and education issues, but at the same time, I don’t feel comfortable as to how that squares with the Public Service Commission’s rules.”
Alderperson Doran disagreed that there had been a mess of communication going on. “I think staff has talked about for several years now this program has been out and available, and the staff does all they can to educate people about it as often as this is practical really. At some point it’s incumbent upon homeowners—property owners to handle these type of issues. It’s the same as if you forget to put your garbage out on garbage night. It doesn’t get collected, it’s not the city’s fault, it’s your responsibility to make sure it gets to the curb to get collected. It’s the harsh reality sometimes of owning property, but these are things as property owners we have to deal with and take responsibility for. The city does a good job of trying to educate people, but we can’t force them to take part in a program that the city offers. That’s kind of up to residents to decide if they value it enough to use it. So, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to say that there’s been a ‘mess of communication’. Certainly, if there were issues in this particular instance, I’m sure staff is reviewing those and looking at ways that staff can improve things. But as a whole I think the staff does a good job of trying to educate residents about opportunities that are available to prevent things like this from happening.”
Alderperson Meltzer responded, “I do think that staff does a very good job. I just think that there’s—there’s improvement needed, and it’s unfortunate that we don’t have more staff power. If we had more members of staff and more staff hours, I think that would make it much easier to ramp up education efforts like this.”
Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 12) who was not a member of the committee but was present for the meeting had a question for Kelli. At the time when Abby reached out to Kelli, she had been under the impression she couldn’t use the AquaHawk system on her properties. He wanted to know why Kelli didn’t tell her she could when she first reached out.
Kelli answered that she wasn’t sure if it ever actually came up in conversation with Abby. Beyond that, the Department of Public Works is the actual owner of the AquaHawk system, not the Finance Department, and although the Finance Department staff know about it, they are not trained on the set-up process.
She also clarified that it was her understanding that they could sign up, but she had not worked through the process to make sure that a landlord could do that. Her understanding was that people wanting to sign up needed an account number and a customer number to create an account, and the Finance Department does provide those numbers.
Alderperson Wolff said he wanted to waive the bill completely but it didn’t sound like they could legally do that. So, instead, he wondered if the bill could be restructured to take some burn off of the property owner.
It seemed to me like Deputy Direct Loper didn’t understand what Alderperson Wolff meant by the term “restructure” and took it to mean “waive”. He said they could not legally do that. The PSC would not allow them to just refund payments due. PSC looks out for all customers and expects each property to manage itself and not push unnecessary costs onto other customers. He said there have been bills that are $10,000 or more that they could not refund because it was water used. “Especially in this case, it wasn’t like it was an unknown leak. It was known. The toilet was leaking for quite some time.”
He also didn’t want anybody coming away from this committee meeting assuming that the Department of Public Works was going to be able to really ramp up its efforts to change things in communication. They don’t have the staff to do that and are spread thin as it is just trying to meet DNR and other regulations. Last year they had 137 main breaks and still had to do all the valve exercising. He didn’t want to give them impression that they could really ramp up their communication efforts. “We’re really doing as much as we can right now, unfortunately.”
Alderperson Wolff re-asked his question to clarify it was about restructuring bills into payment plans.
Kelli said PSC does allow them to do payment plans. The bill for the property in question was currently spread out over a number of months, and all late fees were waived as long as the payments were made as agreed. They cannot, however, waive dollar amounts.
Alderperson Smith said he had been watching Kelli say she thought landlords could sign up but Abby had been shaking her head adamantly that they could not. He would like somebody who had some responsibility to get a definite yes or no as to whether landlords could and how. [The signup process for an AquaHawk account is very basic, and I don’t see any reason why a landlord would not be able to do it provided they had the customer number and account number.]
If they were already including the information for landlords in the notifications they were providing about AquaHawk that was great. If they weren’t, then they should be. He thought that being a landlord is challenging and they have a lot or responsibility. Abby’s last tenant had left, leaving the water bill unpaid. He also agreed with Deputy Director Loper and noted that he had been on the Council when they had had to deny credit adjustments for thousands of gallons of leaks because it was not the city’s responsibility and it was a matter of personal responsibility.
He finished up by saying, “We have a credit here that I can support. You know, it’s not her house, it’s her property house that she leases out, so she doesn’t have as much control of it as if it were her own toilet leaking, but nonetheless that’s the hazard of being a landlord. You get the benefits when things go great and occasionally you have to pitch in a little bit more when they go bad.”
He did want to hear some follow-up as to whether it had been definitively established that landlords could sign up for AquaHawk accounts.
Before they voted on the item he did also want to clarify if the item on the agenda was a recommendation by the staff or was it a recommendation from Abby.
Kelli said that the initial request from Abby had asked for May 29-June 11 to be waived. Kelli then took that timeframe and decreased the water rate Abby was charged by $1.40 per thousand gallons. “That’s the reduction that we are allowed to do by PSC if we were using our leak policy. It’s $1.40 per thousand gallons.”
Alderperson Wolff asked what some of the remedies would have been in this situation if an AquaHawk account had been established.
Deputy Director Loper answered that if an AquaHawk account had been set up then according to PSC they would be able to give a credit; however, they would probably be having some conversations in this case as to whether the property owner got those alerts and, if they got those alerts, why they didn’t pay attention to them, so he didn’t know if they would be recommending a credit in this situation unless there had been a malfunction with the AquaHawk system. Ultimately, the AquaHawk system was a catchall. ” If somebody has AquaHawk, it’s never really gonna come to this because they should know about it well in advance.” He did acknowledge that they needed to find out if landlords could sign up.
Alderperson Meltzer wondered, given the fact that the question was still open as to whether landlords could sign up for AquaHawk, if it made sense to hold the item until the next meeting when more information was available. Alderperson Smith didn’t think it would change anything about the matter at hand because the questions about AquaHawk were looking forward and about future actions.
The committee then voted 3-1 to approve the credit adjustment with Alderpersons Meltzer, Martin, and Smith voting for approval and Alderperson Doran voting nay.
[At the time I watched the committee meeting I had the impression that this credit adjustment was the most that was allowable for a customer who had not set up an AquaHawk account prior to a leak happening, but as I went through my notes and wrote up my recap, that became less clear to me, and now I’m not sure if someone with an AquaHawk would have been eligible for a greater credit or if she received the same credit someone who had met all of the policy requirements would have received.
I suppose there’s an interesting discussion to be had about mercy and who has the authority to give it. It sounded like Abby had a rental agreement in place that required her tenant to pay the water bill. When her tenant left and refused to pay the water bill, leaving Abby to pay it, Abby decided to show her tenant mercy by not exercising her legal right to seek a judgement in small claims court for the amount her tenant owed and which Abby had paid. However, instead of shouldering the cost of that mercy herself she then sought to have the burden removed by the city, essentially trying to remove the cost of her merciful action from her own shoulders and place it on the shoulders of all the other utility customers. Unlike Abby, those customers wouldn’t have the legal option to pursue the tenant in small claims court and so couldn’t willingly choose to show grace to her tenant but instead would be forced to.]
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=929589&GUID=74AB9C9C-4B44-408B-8378-9FEA8B777863
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