21. May 2012 by admin.

In Michigan they’re struggling with the value the property tax billing software should attribute to land that has been declared polluted. In the town of St Louis the question posed is whether such properties – identified by the orange temporary fence that surrounds each polluted area – should be subject to tax at all, since they cannot be sold, so arguably have no value.

Michigan’s Morning Sun reports the possibility that some St. Louis home owners will not have to pay any property taxes due to the orange fences in their yards isn’t known yet, but the first step in finding out has been taken.

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20. May 2012 by admin.

It’s not always those on Struggle Street who are late paying their taxes.  In Florida Pinellas County has shown that four residents are not living pay check to pay check and are delinquent on the bills generated by the County’s property tax billing software.

The four residents who missed that due date and owe the most taxes include a doctor on the state’s board of osteopathic medicine and a lottery winner who received $24 million in 2001. The property owners’ homes range in size from 5,330 square feet to 12,900 square feet.

One Pinellas resident, Jabil CEO Tim Main, was on the delinquent taxpayer list, owing the second-highest amount for a residential property, until Thursday afternoon when he paid his tax bill with a credit card. He owed nearly $65,000 on his 7,338-square-foot Mediterranean mansion on Brightwaters Boulevard NE in the Snell Isle neighbourhood of St. Petersburg.

Main’s payment came after a reporter with the Tampa Bay Times called Jabil Thursday morning. After paying the taxes and a $1,900 convenience fee for paying online, Main said through a spokeswoman that his failure to pay on time was an oversight due to his busy travel schedule.

The four residents still owing the most in delinquent taxes as of last week — slightly more than $300,000 total — are not disputing the county’s appraisal of their property that dictates their tax bill, according to the Pinellas County Clerk of Court.

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20. May 2012 by admin.

An eight-month investigation into the water utility run by the Village of Ridgewood, NJ, showed that the deficit the utility reported to justify a 21 percent increase in 2010 and another 5 percent hike in 2011 in the prices levied by its water billing software was a "complete and utter sham."

"[The deficit] doesn’t exist and never existed," an attorney said. "Over a period of years the Village was dumping expenses into the budget of the water utility."The towns of Glen Rock, Midland Park and Wyckoff are seeking a refund of more than $3 million in a class-action lawsuit filed against the Village of Ridgewood after an investigation into its water utility’s finances showed a 26 percent rate hike imposed on its customers was unjustified, said the attorney representing the municipalities.

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18. May 2012 by admin.

Property tax billing software can only identify who hasn’t paid; ultimately it cannot force them to pay.  That’s sometimes for the Courts to decide.

Nearly four years after the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that the system of penalties that New Orleans City Hall uses to get property owners to pay overdue property taxes is unconstitutional — and a month after an Orleans Parish judge issued a nearly identical judgment — the lawyer at the helm of both cases wants a third judge to force city officials to comply. In a lawsuit filed Friday, attorney Henry Klein argues that five top aides to Mayor Mitch Landrieu have exercised "wilful disobedience" by failing to remove from delinquent tax bills the 10 percent penalty for late payment and the 9.5 percent penalty to cover outside attorney and collection fees. Chief Administrative Officer Norman Foster, City Attorney Richard Cortizas, Deputy City Attorney Brenda Breaux, Code Enforcement Director Pura Bascos and Treasury Bureau Director Sharon McDonald "can hit the ‘delete’ key on the city computer and stop the fleecing of tens of millions of dollars from the citizens," the suit states.

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18. May 2012 by admin.

The prospect of property tax reform in Iowa dimmed this week as a two Democrats joined with 21 Republicans in the Senate to defeat a plan that was advanced by leading Democrats. The two major political parties have been quarrelling about the proper approach to property tax reform for years.

Democrats argued their approach — which employed a tax credit for property taxes a business pays — was geared toward Main Street rather than Wall Street. Republicans countered that a job is a job, regardless of who the employer might be and the tax breaks should go to all businesses, regardless of size.

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17. May 2012 by admin.

Global Water Resources Corp and Thames Water Utilities Ltd in the United Kingdom have announced that they have entered into an agreement to demonstrate the power of Global Water’s FATHOM™ platform for Thames Water’s commercial customers.  Under this agreement, Global Water will develop and implement a Thames Water-specific data hosting, analytics, billing and consumer presentment interface for Thames Water’s high value commercial consumers.  The project will initially take data from automated metering infrastructure pilots currently underway at Thames Water and provide actionable information to consumers on their water use through FATHOM™.  The initial phase of the project is scheduled to be completed by June 15, 2012, and may then be incrementally rolled out to a specific portion of the Thames Water commercial consumer population.

"Despite one of the wettest Aprils ever, we remain in drought having had below-average rainfall for 20 of the previous 25 months. This project is part of our continuing efforts to manage our increasingly precious resource responsibly and effectively over the long term," said Piers Clark, Thames Water’s Commercial Director.  "We know that with increasing volatility in our water resource picture we need to use water wisely.  In order to make informed decisions about water, our customers need to be given access to real-time data. Global Water’s FATHOMTM platform offers that.  In addition, the adoption of FATHOM™ allows us to increase service levels and customer satisfaction, a key goal for the company."

Trevor Hill, President and CEO of Global Water noted, "This Thames Water deal is a critical milestone in our international expansion.  We are delighted that a company as forward thinking as Thames Water has seen the benefit of our consumer-facing demand-side management tools.  And as we have developed these tools from the ground up to be deployed remotely via a cloud-based architecture, agencies like Thames Water can have access to these tools almost immediately.  In our increasingly connected world, people are demanding more information - specifically more personalized information - with which to make decisions.  From a water perspective, this level of information has never been available - until FATHOMTM."

FATHOMTM is deployed as an integrated suite of utility-to-utility services including Automated Meter Infrastructure, Customer Information System and Asset Management solutions that have been proven to lower utility operating costs while improving service levels. The solution is hosted in a secure cloud computing environment, which makes implementation rapid and requires no additional IT personnel or infrastructure.  Further, and increasingly importantly, FATHOMTM can be deployed incrementally, allowing utilities to demonstrate its power on their highest value customers before rolling it out to their entire client population.

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16. May 2012 by admin.

Frequent meter reads can provide an early warning of leaks and other problems.  They can also increase the frequency of bills from the water billing software, allowing customers to budget for water consumption.

The Cleveland Water Department will spend $75 million and the next year-and-a-half outfitting water meters with new technology that will automatically report water usage on an hourly basis — an upgrade that water officials say will dramatically improve customer service in a department once beleaguered by complaints of incorrectly estimated bills.

Technicians began installing the new equipment on Tuesday in commercial properties throughout the region and by June should move on to residential areas. The department plans to pause once it reaches 25,000 installations to assess the technology and work out bugs.

But if all goes well, the department hopes to reach all 420,000 customers in 70 Northeast Ohio communities by the end of 2013, said Jason Wood, chief of public affairs for the city’s Public Utilities Department.

The new technology is a cornerstone of a plan to overhaul the water department after weathering years of criticism and complaints of inaccurate bills, faulty meters and poor customer service.

Wood said that since the turnaround project began a year ago, call center operations have been streamlined and customer service representatives have been cross-trained to handle all call types. Callers who once remained on hold for 45 minutes or longer, now receive assistance within 30 seconds, he said.

The automated meter reading system will further enhance customer service by giving the department tools to more closely monitor water usage and diagnose problems, such as leaky faucets and running toilets, before they lead to higher than normal bills that incense customers, Wood said.

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16. May 2012 by admin.

Water conservation is a fact of life that is a good thing for the Earth but a problem for water utilities whose revenue depends almost entirely on how much water they sell.

Valparaiso Utility Director John Hardwick said, after a couple of decades of federal insistence on water efficient appliances and of homes being constructed with toilets and showers that use less water, consumption has decreased. The economy also has affected water utilities as people are less inclined to water their lawns.

Valparaiso has survived despite declining consumption because of the growth, adding new customers as development occurred in and near the city. For the last two or three years the growth all but halted because of the recession, and now the city is about to lose its biggest water customer, Porter hospital.

As the need for more revenue to maintain the aging infrastructure grows, utilities around the country are being forced to look for other ways to raise money. As part of the National Drinking Water Week observance this year, it’s a good time to look at the problem.

"We are always looking at our cash flow, our budget, revenue and expenses, and we try to run the utilities with a positive cash flow," Hardwick said. "Although the hospital is a small percent of our total revenue, when you operate with the margins we do, every percent matters.

"No matter what our position is on conservation, it’s going to happen," he said. "I think most folks understand conservation is a good thing. We have the same amount of water as we did when the dinosaurs ruled, but it’s not necessarily readily available to customers."

Weather can further stress the water situation. Hardwick said the southern part of Indiana, and the area around Indianapolis had drought conditions for several years. Even the Valparaiso area was considered to be in a drought for three or four months last year.

"It’s fortunate for Valparaiso that there is no stress on our aquifer, but that is not an infinite resource," he said. "And if we cut back on water use by 10 percent, our expenses don’t go down. Some electrical and manpower costs would go down if we aren’t pumping as much water, but not by 10 percent.

"Also, conservation doesn’t mean there won’t be rate increases. Our NIPSCO bills, labor costs and the cost of supplies continue to go up. We’ve been finding ways to be more efficient, and we will continue to do so."

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15. May 2012 by admin.

Thanks to low-flow toilets, efficient shower heads and washing machines and lawn watering restrictions, South Florida has managed to quit wasting so much water.

The 53 water utilities serving Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties pumped about 83 million fewer gallons a day in 2010 than they did in 2000 — despite a population that grew by some 600,000 over the decade — according to a new draft analysis produced by the South Florida Water Management District.

It adds up to South Floridians using about 20 percent less water each day for drinking, bathing and sprinkling yards per person than they did a decade ago. That’s about 30 billion gallons over the course of a year, enough unused water to fill 45,900 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

It’s an unexpected but entirely welcome drop-off in public demand in a region that only a decade ago was worried about taps running dry in relentlessly sprawling suburbs.

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15. May 2012 by admin.

Anyone thinking about a career or a career move might want to consider diving into the water business.

A large number of water and wastewater professionals is nearing retirement, and water utilities will be looking for people to fill the ranks. A person could do a lot worse than celebrating National Drinking Water Week by checking out the flood of career possibilities in water.

According to the American Water Works Association, workforce shortages are projected for treatment plant operators, distribution system mechanics, engineers, scientists and other positions in the public and the private sectors. To meet the growing need, the AWWA and the Water Environment Federation created the Work for Water website showcasing job opportunities.  Consultants who understand the requirements for water billing software are also in short supply.

The site links to job postings and provides information in the necessary skills, training programs and resources for water professionals and even offers testimonials from people now in the water workforce.

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