THUNDER BAY – Inspectors won’t be going door to door anymore to read water meters as homeowners are now responsible to either provide the reading to the city or install a remote device on the outside of the building.
Thunder Bay city council on Monday approved a recommendation from administration to bring water meter reading services provided by city employees – ending an existing agreement with a third party service provider – and only going to residences where a remote reader is in place.
Of the city’s 37,000 water accounts, there are 5,200 that have remote water meter reading devices that are accessible to inspectors on the outside of the building. There are 27,700 residential accounts where inspectors need to be allowed inside to check the water meter.
A report to council detailed that less than seven per cent of visits to residences by inspectors actually resulted in a reading in the first half of this year, continuing a significant decline that began from 18 per cent in 2015 and dropped to 10 per cent in 2016.
City director of revenue Rob Colquhoun said all other property owners are responsible for submitting the reading on a quarterly basis either through telephone, online or text messaging systems. The city also offers a system with 37 per cent of residential accounts signing up to receive reminders to provide their reading and due dates for their next water bill.
“For the people who don’t sign up to the system and don’t provide a reading, after four estimates we send them a notice their water is being shut off,” Colquhoun said. “The owner should be responsible and diligent for providing meter readings.”
The remote reading devices are available with the cost to install estimated at about $155. Council also approved a one-year pilot program to subsidize the devices to low-income persons with disabilities who would have difficulty accessing and reading their meter, which was estimated to cost a little more than $11,000.
Colquhoun said there are checks and balances that remain in effect to ensure the readings provided by homeowners without the remote readers are accurate.
“We have software that identifies exceptions. If somebody phones in a meter reading and it’s out of the norm and out of the exception parameters we have in place there would be follow up,” Colquhoun said. “There would be a phone call or what we’re doing a lot of times is people with their cell phone take a picture of the meter and send it to us for verification.”
The policy would also include the hiring of one full-time city water meter inspector, with the elimination of the previous third party service agreement resulting in a net budget savings of $23,000.
