Feb. 05--Eight months after Tinley Park officials vowed to fix the town's troubled water meters, the village has yet to implement a recommendation by its consultants to resolve one of the problem's thorniest issues: how much to refund residents.
Residents have no formal process for disputing water bills, and refunds are handled on a case-by-case basis with no clear methodology to determine who is owed what and why.
Residents have received nearly $900 for three years' worth of refunds on the high end, while others have been refunded less than $50, records show. The village declined to say how it's resolved individual cases or explain the different outcomes.
Records show Tinley Park typically refunds a resident for one billing period -- about three months -- without doing a more extensive review of the resident's past water use. The village in some cases has issued refunds for a year or more of overpayments after a resident complained a refund for one billing period was insufficient.
The process stands in contrast to what the village's hired consultants recommended in an October report: that the village create a formal "due process" program "for customers to dispute their bill." In December, village officials said they hadn't yet created such a program. They've since declined to further explain how they determine refunds, citing an ongoing class-action lawsuit filed in the wake of a Tribune investigation into the village's faulty water meters.
That investigation, published in June, showed the village knew for years that its water meters were prone to lead to overbilling and that the village also appeared to underrefund residents with problematic meters. The village initially argued its meters were fine, but it has since walked a fine line between acknowledging problems while arguing they're not widespread. Even so, on Tuesday village officials announced that a plan to replace all 17,000 of the troubled smart meters remaining in Tinley Park homes is moving forward.
In the months after the Tribune's investigation was published, the village's public works director resigned and Mayor Dave Seaman apologized for the town's handling of the meters. The village hired an outside consultant to assess the problem and make recommendations. Seaman has vowed to "make it right" for people who were "harmed" by the meters, but not all residents feel that their cases were handled fairly.
Tinley Park officials have previously said they ask residents to outline their billing concerns in writing for a water clerk to review. From there, the complaint could go up the chain to the water billing office coordinator, then the water superintendent, and finally the village manager's office.
Records show that approach has produced inconsistencies in the village's handling of billing disputes. In one case, the village gave a resident a partial refund for one billing cycle, then gave another partial refund for a different billing cycle the same day the resident asked for one.
In at least two cases, the village told residents that additional refunds would be considered after the village's consultant issued its final report. That report was made public in October, but records don't show whether the village went back to those residents, and village officials have declined to comment.
In June, after the Tribune's investigation, the village gave one resident three years of refunds totaling $870 after the resident's irrigation water meter showed usage even though the system was "shut down," village notes show.
In determining how much to refund residents, a key issue is just how the meters go bad. The village has argued that the water meters work fine until, one day, they spin out of control, so quickly and so obviously that the issue is easily discovered. In such a scenario, the refund arguably would be small because overbilling would have been found quickly.
But the Tribune previously found cases in which residents saw repeated, unexplained waves of water-use spikes recorded by the meters over the years before the meters were officially deemed to be malfunctioning. Experts have told the Tribune it's possible the meters could be malfunctioning in ways not easily detected, and the village's actions suggest that, at times, it agreed, albeit after repeated complaints.
In one case previously profiled by the Tribune, Donna and Carl Gerlich's water meter showed spikes for at least five years before the meter was changed. With a new meter, the Gerlichs' water use returned to far lower and far more consistent readings. The village initially refunded the couple $109. But the Tribune calculated the Gerlichs could be owed $317 more -- for the years of unexplained water bill spikes.
The village's initial refund in 2011 went back six months. In January, after Donna Gerlich repeatedly complained, the village decided to refund her $70 for an additional six-month period.
In an email, Village Manager Dave Niemeyer previously said Tinley Park gave her the refund because "it was clear that the consumption during the nearly one-year period before the meter was replaced in May 2011 was far outside of the reasonable range of consumption for a family of that size."
But the village, citing its consultant, said the Gerlichs' spikes were "inconsistent with typical meter failures."
Donna Gerlich believes her meter was malfunctioning for longer than the village said, and she sees the episode as proof that Tinley Park is shortchanging residents.
She said the village should have a more formal process for handling complaints and should look deeper into residents' water-use history when a meter is proven to be defective.
"They can't put together some kind of program to do an analysis?" Gerlich asked. "How hard would that be?"
The Tribune's Joe Mahr contributed.
gpratt@tribpub.com
