After Dysfunctional Meter Mess, Chicago Suburb Makes Proposal

A Chicago suburb struggling with inaccurate smart meters is trying to move ahead and fix the problem.

“Under the proposal, Tinley Park would borrow $6.5 million to replace 18,263 meters and cover related expenses. The project would cost about $396,000 a year on a low-interest loan for 20 years and would allow the village to ‘dramatically accelerate’ meter replacement. Counting interest, the deal would cost $7.9 million over two decades. It would take an estimated 18 to 24 months to replace all the meters, officials said. The Village Board would have to sign off on the plan before it becomes official,” the Chicago Tribune reported.

“The village considered issuing a blanket refund to all customers totaling $1 million ‘in an attempt (to) restore confidence in our system,’ according to a memo by interim Public Works Director Bill Balling. But Balling concluded in his memo that such a refund would be too costly and said there's ‘no evidence to support that the entire fleet of digital meters are malfunctioning,’” the report said.

A Chicago Tribune investigation had revealed chronic overcharging by smart meters in Tinley Park. The probe found that the meters, which the village bought for $1.8 million, “regularly overstate how much water has gone through them, resulting in overcharges.”

At that point, the village has failed to adequately address the problem, according to the investigation.

“When the village found bad meters, it repeatedly did not fully refund residents. It has tried to explain away the problem in ways contradicted by its own records, including understating by at least half the number of overbilling meters it has documented. And those records lack details on how thousands more meters have failed — making it impossible to determine the true number of meters the village has discovered with the problem,” the report said.

Here are a few additional findings from the Tribune investigation, per Patch, which noted that as of June, around $90,000 has been refunded to customers:

• at least 355 meters were issuing faulty readings, more than twice the number the village told residents about
• residents say they have a difficult time getting the village to acknowledge the overcharges, as long as 16 months in one case
• when the village discovers faulty meters, it hasn’t issued accurate refunds
• village records lack details on meter failures, which could number in the thousands

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