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Cary wants to reimburse $147K in water overbilling

The village of Cary will be reimbursing two businesses, an office building and a government-funded agency a total of $147,564 in overbilled water usage stemming from data entry errors going back as far as 1997, officials said.

The village also discovered it had underbilled the same accounts by a total of $44,534, but will be forgiving that amount, Village Administrator Chris Clark said.

There is no suspicion of impropriety, just data-entry errors that went undetected until a review in 2011, and later a financial audit that took place from December to March, Clark said. The names of the account holders will be disclosed later this week after one final meeting with the parties involved, he said. Altogether there are five water service accounts involved because the government-funded agency has two accounts, he added.

The village began modernizing how it manages water meter-reading and utility billing in 2010. Altogether, Cary has 6,270 commercial and residential accounts. An analysis of 200 high-use commercial accounts in the first quarter of 2011 showed that some accounts’ meter readings were inconsistent with data entered in the village’s financial management information system, Clark said.

“It was typed incorrectly into financial system by financial staff,” Clark said. “It’s difficult to tell (who entered the wrong data) other than we know when the dates of the errors began.”

The village already has implemented new business processes and a management review system to ensure the same errors aren’t repeated, he said.

“Obviously it’s not a situation we’re happy with, but it’s a situation that needs to be corrected,” he said of the overbilling repayment.

The village board is expected to vote May 15 to authorize the lump-sum repayment, he said. The money will come out of the village’s water and sanitation fund, which as of Friday had an unrestricted balance of $8.65 million, Clark said.

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