June 11--Tinley Park officials are planning two separate audits of their troubled smart water meter program in response to a Tribune investigation exposing chronic overbilling and the village's inaccurate statements to residents about the scope of the problem.
In the meantime, some residents told the Tribune they're waiting for relief and are not sure whether they can trust the village.
The Tribune investigation, published June 4, found that the middle-class suburb for years has known that the brand of smart meters it uses were prone to overbilling residents, yet it gave them an online article and newsletter mailing that suggested the meters were fine.
On Tuesday night, village officials said during a committee meeting that they will issue two separate requests for proposals from outside consultants who will review the water meter program and history, in general, and perform an audit of the village's billing and refunding procedures.
The Tribune investigation highlighted questionable efforts by the village to find bad meters and ensure that residents got the full refunds they deserved. In one case, the village cut a couple's water bills by $109 after discovering the faulty meter, but a Tribune analysis found that the couple may have overpaid $317 more.
Jake Vandenberg, a newly elected Tinley Park trustee, said he doesn't want the village to "deflect" or "come up with excuses."
"Let's get a consultant. Let's figure a good approach to this. Let's restore some trust, and let's move forward," Vandenberg said.
Village officials previously defended the water meters and said problems were rare. Now Tinley Park leaders face significant challenges in determining how to address the water meter issues and how to reimburse people who may have been unfairly charged, like Bill Switalski.
Switalski, of Des Plaines, said he became responsible for his parents' Tinley Park home in February 2012 after his father died. Although the house was vacant, Switalski said he received a bill for 20,000 gallons of water use.
At first he suspected that someone may have been stealing water from outside the home. But in February 2014, his parents' account was again billed for 19,000 gallons despite the home being empty, leading the village to replace his meter and give him a full refund on that bill -- but not the other, he said.
Reading the Tribune story was revelatory for Switalski, he said, because he didn't realize that the issue was widespread.
"I went around in circles with the Tinley Park Village Hall about unusually high water usage bills after my dad passed away," Switalski said.
The problem with the meters is called "spinning" -- a nod to how numbers on overbilling meters spin more than they should to record water going through.
Village records show that at least 355 meters were diagnosed with the problem since 2007. But one former village employee told the Tribune that far more meters were caught spinning, and the true number could be obscured by village logs that don't list reasons for thousands of meter failures.
"We're giving the village of Tinley Park money for something that they didn't earn," Switalski said. "Who likes to be billed for something that you didn't buy?"
Other residents said they've lost faith in both the meters and the village's testing.
Laura and Ken Konieczny said they knew something was wrong when a $530 water bill arrived at the end of March. A village employee came to their home, noted that the meter didn't show flow when the water was off and blamed a dripping outdoor spigot, the Koniecznys said.
The village tested the meter and found it passed, even though it under-recorded water flow by more than 7 percent at two of three flow rates tested, according to village records provided by the Koniecznys. As a result of the test, the Koniecznys said the village told them to pay the full bill.
The Tribune has found that meters can pass tests once only to fail the same tests months later. And even meters given more elaborate flow tests have been found to significantly underbill one day only to significantly overbill another day.
Still suspicious, Ken Konieczny said he caught their meter racking up dozens of gallons of water use when no one was home before it was taken out for testing. But they didn't how many other residents had similar problems until they read about Tinley Park's meters in the Tribune, Laura Konieczny said.
Trusting neither the meter nor the village's testing, and with village officials saying it will take "a couple weeks" to prepare the request for proposals from consultants and still longer for the review, Laura Konieczny said she feels she has "no recourse" and worries about what her next bill -- based in part on her old meter -- will show.
"I'm wondering how we're going to be able to afford it," she said.
Chicago Tribune's Joe Mahr contributed.
gpratt@tribpub.com
lzumbach@tribpub.com
Twitter @laurenzumbach
