SAN DIEGO — A Mission Hills homeowner has resolved his water billing issues with the City of San Diego after contacting CBS 8 via workingforyou@cbs8.com
CBS 8 interviewed Ken Perilli last week about a notice from the city’s Public Utilities Department that said his water bills were being withheld pending an investigation into "abnormal water usage."
“The morning after the segment aired, I began receiving emails and phone calls from the water department,” Perilli said.
Previously, he had been unable to get through by telephone to the water department. “The customer service’s lack of picking up the phone is the end of the problem. The start of the problem is a lack of meter readers,” Perilli discovered.
Once he finally did get through, a customer service representative told Perilli his water bills had been estimated for months because of a city staffing shortage of meter readers.
And, his water usage was "abnormal" because it was actually way down from the year before.
“In November 2023, I got a notice of abnormal usage and that's because that's the first time the city had read my meter in six months,” he said.
Turns out, Perilli had an extra person living in his house in 2022, meaning his water usage was way up at the time. The city was using those old usage levels to estimate his bills for much of 2023, he said. “The true-up calculation resulted in a under $500 bill that I needed to pay for the last six months,” he said.
Perilli said he plans on writing a letter to the city’s Public Utilities Department suggesting it stop withholding so many accounts, estimated at more than 24,000 water customers. He also thinks the city needs to change the language in its notification letter to be more transparent about staffing problems.
“It’s about communication and, I think, better transparency. I think the citizens here would become a lot more comfortable and supportive of the water department working through their problems,” he said.
The City of San Diego emailed CBS 8 the following statement:
“Over the past year the City's Public Utilities Department has dramatically improved its ability to fill vacant positions and they are continuing to hire for new positions across the department, including water meter readers and customer service representatives. Thanks to pay increases, the return of pension benefits and the Mayor’s commitment to filling vacancies, we’ve been able to grow our team and improve our operations. With this additional hiring, since October 2023 staff has completed all meter reading routes each month. There will always be some meters that cannot be read for a variety of reasons, such as if a car is parked over a meter box, a landscape obstruction, bees in the box, etc. When this results in an unread meter, the bill is then estimated.”
At CBS 8, we are always Working for You and our community. This is a station promise that we will go the extra mile to solve a problem our audience can’t solve themselves. We want to hear your ideas on how we can cover and help our community. If you have a story idea, please email us at workingforyou@cbs8.com.
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