Monday deadline set for electric-bill answers
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A team of utility investigators will work through the weekend to produce a definitive answer for Mayor Greg Nickels by Monday on what's behind the inflated bills sent to Seattle City Light customers.
In making that pledge yesterday, Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis also dismissed a theory advanced by Seattle City Councilman Jim Compton that the city's $40 million computerized billing system is to blame for a number of inaccurate bills — some thousands of dollars too high — that the utility has sent out in recent months.
"It's not the computer system," Ceis insisted. Asked what the problem was, he said, "We're still working on that. ... It appears it's more of a data issue."
Pressed on what that means, he said, "The information that is being put into the computer."
If Ceis is correct, that puts back into play problems with meters and meter readers — the two areas Compton said Thursday the city's top technology officer, Marty Chakoian, had ruled out. Chakoian yesterday denied that the utility had eliminated meters and meter readers as the source of the problem.
He suggested that Compton had misunderstood him; Compton could not be reached yesterday evening.
Yesterday, Fred Podesta, the official who oversees Consolidated Customer Service System (CCSS), the billing system for both Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities, also defended the system. "The billing system is producing correctly calculated bills, based on the consumption data input into it," he said.
Asked what that leaves, Podesta also pointed to meters and meter readers, as well as customer-service personnel who are part of a "validation group" and who are supposed to correct questionable bills.
Earlier this week, Joe McGee, executive director of Local 17, the union that represents the utility's 44 meter readers, defended the job they do.
"They feel like they do their damndest," he said. "There's a lot of frustration that when something goes wrong, it all flies their way."
In the case of Darleen Harrington, a Magnolia woman whose February bill for $2,238.69 kicked off the investigation, the utility is still searching for answers.
The utility believes she got a bad bill based on earlier underreporting of her electricity use and that a "catch-up" process penalized her by wrongly assuming she had used all the energy during a single billing cycle.
Utility rates are structured into three tiers, adjusted seasonally, to reward customers for conservation — the less electricity used, the lower the rate. The first tier is 4 cents per kilowatt-hour; the second is 8 cents and the third 16 cents. The highest rate is applied to all consumption exceeding 125 kilowatt-hours a day in winter and 60 kilowatt-hours a day in summer.
Podesta said the utility still couldn't explain why Harrington was undercharged in the first place, or why the third-tier rate was misapplied.
Ceis said he could not say how widespread the problem was, "but preliminary indications are that it's not very extensive." He said the utility, with about 357,000 customers including businesses, did not believe it involved hundreds.
In addition to concerns about inaccurate bills, a number of consumers have complained about what they said was Seattle City Light's condescending attitude in dealing with the public, insisting that wacky bills were correct, and lecturing customers about the importance of conservation.
Meanwhile, Harrington last night finally received an apology from three Seattle City Light officials, including Deputy Superintendent Joan Walters, who personally delivered a corrected bill in the amount of $222. Harrington had previously paid $200, meaning she ended up paying 19 percent of the original $2,238.69 bill.
Harrington said the officials explained that they went back to 1998 to look at her use pattern and based the bill on that, and didn't go by the meter reading at all. She said that was nice, but would they treat the other angry customers the same way?
They assured her they would, she said.
Peter Lewis can be reached at 206-464-2217 or plewis@seattletimes.com.
Seattle Times staff reporter Susan Gilmore contributed to this report.