I bought a park in Georgia last year with 80 lots with county water meters on each lot. Evidently years ago the previous owner made a good 'ol boy deal with the county to install meters and set the tenants up on individual accounts directly with the county. Now they are threatening to install a master meter and close all the tenant accounts. I don’t know yet if they are going to remove the lot meters or not. Any ideas on how to fight this?
i am would think this could be a good thing for you as a revenue stream. lets sat that they do goto a master setup and leave the old meters in because they are yours. look at the bill to day is there a servive fee of any kind on there. let say you charge 10 per unit plus the cost of water thats 800 mo per month if you pay you park manager or a employeee todo this it should cost you maybe 200 for labor at 20 hour. it is very easy to do it take me less then 5 min per unit . slip would look something like this … unit #… name… date… last reading…say 32000 this reading…say 36000 total…say 4000 times water cost say .01 amount due 40.00 plus service fee 10.00 total due 50.00
Why do they want to remove them?
Hello,
This issue has come up across the country, as municipalities struggle under fiscal constraints, they are reluctant to provide or be responsible “ie accuracy” for individual meters in MHP communities.
Regarding the County installing one main meter, the municipal supplier most likely does not want the maintenance of the individual meters (which may actually belong to the MHP); Has investigated the water usage and determined the older individual meters are not accurate, noting older meters do not capture 100% of the usage; Reading one new meter is far easier than traversing through your MHP reading individual meters.
You can still bill the residents based on their sub-meters: If you use a third party billing service, pass through the reading/billing/collecting fees, which may actually be less than what the residents previously paid the City, (only one base fee for the one new main meter is shared now by all of your residents). In addition, the difference from the main and the individuals meters can allocated back to the residents.
Let me know if I can be of additional help.
We’re here to answer your water sub-metering questions.
Sincerely
Dan Helton
President
Southern Water Management
727-827-4509, 421-9695