ATHABASCA – An issue with the Town of Athabasca’s billing software is to blame for some of the municipality's inexplicable water losses over the last year.
The issue was brought before councillors during an April 16 presentation from Dennis Lee and Jay Choi, respective owners of the Clash of Touchless Car Wash and S.S. Athabasca Car Wash, who saw their water bills increase exponentially in February and March.
According to CAO Rachel Ramey, a tiny error had some large consequences. Some commercial businesses in town that have a high-water usage have two water meter chambers, one for high flow and one for low flow.
“When the information comes from the program that the utilities guys use to do the reads, it transfers to our financial system to generate the utility bill,” said Ramey. “Where the decimal place is on the meter, it was being misplaced when it was sent to the financial software.”
The decimal shifting meant the businesses were being charged for a tenth of the water usage they should have been. When the error was caught and the businesses were correctly charged, water bills skyrocketed. Choi’s business went from a $216 bill in December and January to a $3,342 bill in February and March after consumption jumped from 26 cubic meters on one chamber to 405. In total, his water bill for the two months was nearly $10,000 — during the same period in 2022 he only paid $2,305. Both businessmen told council they would be unable to pay for the sudden increase in costs, which caught them off guard.
Lee said he was still waiting to see how much the correction would cost moving forwards, but he increased the cost per car by $2, rising from $19 to $21.
Choi also raised his costs May 1, with a printed out copy of his latest bill beside the notice highlighting the increase.
"It's tough," he said. "I understand costs have to go up, but why 100 per cent all at once? Why not five per cent, then 10 per cent, 20 per cent etc.?"
Choi said he'll be able to keep the business open, but would be reducing his own salary to keep up with the sudden increase — according to him, there's not any more fat to trim off the business model.
Ramey said the town didn’t have values for how much money the error had cost, or a time frame for how long the issue had been occurring. The town noticed it lost 35 per cent of its purchased water in 2022, and while that number had decreased to 24 per cent in 2023, the billing glitch wasn’t discovered until early 2024.
“Every year we do a calculation on where the losses are, and this was another step in figuring out where they were, and there it was,” said Ramey.
A fair solution?
During the hectic discussion about the bills after Lee and Choi presented, councillors discussed how to amend the issue in a way that’s fair to the business owners, and to ratepayers.
“We have to be as fair as possible when it comes to issues like these,” said Athabasca Mayor Rob Balay. “It wasn’t fair that we didn’t give enough notice for the increase, and we didn’t give the businesses the time to react to that.”
Councillors voted to have administration work with the businesses affected by the decimal error — Ramey said it wasn’t more than a handful, although she couldn’t share an exact number — with bill forgiveness based on a twelve-month average for the current billing cycle.
Councillors were unanimous in their belief that the businesses shouldn’t be unduly punished for the error, but still be charged the full rate moving forwards.
“The thought process is always just what’s the fairest decision for the entire community,” said Coun. Jonathan LeMessurier. ‘What’s fair, and what’s best. As a personal business owner, I absolutely understand that aspect of it; we have to really think about them, this is a huge hit all at once.
“I also have a lot of empathy for all the taxpayers who’ve had to unintentionally pay for this error.”
One silver lining in the entire discussion, according to Balay, was the town’s increased focus on its water usage, and the process its undertaken to cut down on waste.
“It was an eyeopener," said Balay. “It made us realize how much water we use for the water park, or irrigating the riverfront, or water flushing.
“It was more significant than we first realized. I like the fact that administration was proactive and they found ways to reduce the water that was being unaccounted for that we were still paying for.”
