utility bill wild goose chase

if you're like me, then you probably haven't ever looked deeply into your town utility bill. you just pay it each month and move on. but, with the stories from WHSV about high water bills, I decided to look into our monthly utility bill. 

The bill itself contains charges for water, sewer and garbage, meter number, previous and present meter readings (90 and 92--fictitious numbers), usage (2000--another fictitious number) and amount ($25.57 for water, $25.02 for sewer and $12.13 for garbage). There are several dates on the bill:

• billing date (02/28/2022) (appears twice)
• due date (03/20/2022) (appears twice)
• previous reading date (02/17/2022) (same as present reading date)
• present reading date (02/17/2022) (same as previous reading date)

does the same date for previous and present readings make any sense to you?

There's a message in red on the bill that reads "FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE REFERENCE THE UTILITY BILL ADJUSTMENT & WATER METER POLICY". since said policy wasn't on the bill, I went to the town's website and typed "utility bill adjustment & water meter policy" into the search block. "Invalid search" was the response. 

I then clicked on "Public Works + Utilities" under the "inside town hall" heading on the town's home page. Then I clicked on the "water and sewer rate information" block. under the "water and wastewater rate survey" heading it states: "Please see the Water and Wastewater Rate Survey prepared by Draper Aden Associates to see how Strasburg rates compare with other localities across Virginia: HERE ." The link took me to Draper Aden Associates' webpage where I requested the 2021 and 2020 Water and Waste Water reports. Each report has multiple pages of "water data" for numerous towns in Virginia--except Strasburg. ????

at this point I'm thinking that I'm on a wild goose chase--but, I continued on. 

At the bottom of the "water and sewer rate information" web page there are two hotlinks: "Water and Wastewater Rate Report" and "water bill unit calculator". when I clicked on the first I got Draper Aden Associates' 2019 report. if you're interested in out-of-date information, then you can download this report. You can click on the second hotlink too. I did--quite frankly, it raises more questions than it answers. 

• what is a "billing unit"? (answer: a fictitious number)
• why not compute the bill using actual meter readings? 
• why not show actual gallons used (present meter reading minus previous meter reading), rather than converting and rounding them into fictitious "billing units"?
• why does my utility bill show only two fictitious two-digit numbers for the meter readings? (meter readings in the sample "water bill unit calculator" chart show 6 digits--3 whole numbers and 3 digits after the decimal point.) 

and then there are questions about the dates:

• same date for both previous and present readings? needless to say, we didn't use 2,000 gallons (a fictitious number) of water in a single day!
• when was the previous meter reading (90, another fictitious number) actually read?
• when was the present meter reading (92, another fictitious number) actually read?
• what were the actual meter readings in decimals? 
• why aren't actual meter readings in decimals shown on the bill (like those shown in the "water bill unit calculator")?
• why aren't the actual gallons used shown on the bill?

by this time my head hurt with all of the errors, fictitious numbers, misinformation, contradictions, obfuscations and dead ends. 

all in all, trying to figure out our water bill was a complete waste of time--a wild goose chase. 

can you imagine doing business with a gas station that rounded up the amount of gas pumped to the next even gallon instead of showing the actual number of gallons of gas pumped in decimals? 

neither can I. strasburg's water bills don't pass the "smell test".

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