The complaints have piled up: tales from city residents, churches and even the city’s own properties of vastly inflated water bills, glitches following the adoption of a new monthly billing system in 2016, and recent cries for more transparency and accountability from DPW as another three-year water rate hike is set to take effect. Now, Baltimore’s Department of Public Works says it will arrange for an independent review of its billing system.
DPW Director Rudy Chow announced this morning he’s “taking the necessary steps to commission an independent review of the Department’s Water Bureau customer billing operations,” the results of which will be made public.
In the announcement, DPW nodded to the recent community meetings it held to garner feedback from water customers ahead of the pending 30 percent rate hike from 2020 to 2022. “We spoke with a large number of customers during our community engagement meetings, and one message we heard is that we need to provide even more information to build confidence in our billing operations,” Chow said in a statement. “We need to demonstrate the bills we send to our customers meet or surpass industry standards. We always strive to be timely AND accurate.”
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