Those smart water meters the City of Spur has been installing in recent weeks are indeed pretty smart—right to the precise reading on the specified cutoff date and time each month, said City Secretary Ashley Carothers.
But the software they use isn’t so smart about automatically syncing with Fundview, the city’s new billing program.
That mismatch has caused billing cycles for water customers to be unpredictable, since the city office is at the mercy of programmers who are still testing results. “Fundview is pretty new to us,” explained Carothers. “The process still has wrinkles.”
In this interim phase, until city staff can undergo detailed training Nov. 12–14, it’s been hard to know when the cutoff date for water might occur; and since there are still a few meters remaining to be installed, some customers experienced a longer number of days on their bill (which will be followed up with a shorter one), while others experienced a more regular cutoff. For now, different customers will see different billing dates during the transition.
As all the changes fall into place, the city is hoping for a consistent cutoff date of the last calendar day of each month regardless of the number of days. And customers can trust that the digital meters, which transmit data directly to the computer system, should be more accurate than manual meter reading, which also costs the city a good deal more in staff hours.
Additionally, some gas meters have already been switched over to digital, and this process will continue until all are changed over as well.
Carothers also said that there is some delay in U.S. postal delivery of bills, which goes through San Antonio from its billing processor rather than directly through Spur as in earlier days.
