Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, August 10, 1995                   TAG: 9508100063
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KIMBERLY N. MARTIN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WATER BILL NOT AS BAD AS IT LOOKS

Things, however, aren't always as they seem, as the pink insert in the bill explained.

What Daniel and about 6,000 of the county's other water customers were looking at wasn't a monthly bill at all, but their last quarterly one, county billing supervisor Wayne Williams said. The county switched to monthly billing last month.

Of course, there was a 10 percent increase in the county's water rate. Since 1991 the county has nearly doubled its water rates to finance the Spring Hollow Reservoir. But this is the last of the scheduled increases for that project.

The sewer rates also went up about 25 percent to pay for the county's share of the sewer treatment plant improvements, Williams explained.

It's an explanation he has made dozens of times since Friday.

"At 10 o'clock [the bills] hit the mail, and the phone started ringing. The phone rang incessantly until we left after 5. It started ringing again before 8 Monday morning," Williams said.

He admits some confusion is warranted. It's a baffling system.

The county's 18,000 or so water customers are split into three cycles. Each cycle had its meter read and was billed once every three months.

It was the customers in the first cycle who found themselves in murky waters.

In July, the first-cycle customers received their first monthly bill - an estimate based on one-third of the bill for February, March and April.

Last week, their bill for the May, June and July quarter arrived, less the payment they'd made in July.

"People looked at the bill and said 'That can't possibly be my monthly bill because that's too much,'" said Anne Marie Green, the county's director of community relations. "This was a settle-up bill."

The county's other 12,000 customers avoided the billing quandary because they paid their last quarterly bill before the county started with the monthly payment system.

After years of debating the pros and cons of a monthly billing system, the Board of Supervisors approved the change last March, Green said. The change cost an estimated $32,000 for postage and forms.

Green characterizes the swap as the county being responsive to citizens who "were having a hard time paying their quarterly bill." She said three smaller monthly payments would be more manageable for them than one large bill at the end of a quarter.

This also was the first step in a larger plan, Director of Finance Diane Hyatt said. Voluntary automatic withdrawals from county residents' bank accounts to pay utility bills and monthly meter reading - possibly by Apco - are next.

Another reason is purely financial. The county loses an estimated $9,000 a year in bad debt, Assistant Finance Director Paul Grice said.

By implementing a monthly billing system, the county can cut off free riders sooner. With quarterly billing, there were 75 days from a bill's mailing to an actual cut-off in service for delinquent customers. Now it's 45.