Fiscal Year 2004 Proposed Budget

Section N - Enterprise, Special Revenue and Internal Services Funds
Utilities Fund
Department of Environmental Services

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UTILITIES SERVICES OFFICE

PROGRAM MISSION: To generate the revenue to fund water, sewer, and solid waste services for our customers.

The office provides timely and accurate customer-oriented billing and utilities account services, as well as Utilities Fund management. The Utilities Services Office provides water meter reading and water, sewer and solid waste billing for approximately 36,000 accounts. This includes quarterly billing for about 34,000 residential and apartment accounts and monthly billing for about 2,000 water/sewer commercial accounts, including schools, County government facilities and federal agencies. The office also responds to customer billing and water, sewer, and refuse services inquiries.

Utilities Services Office
FY 2003 FY 2004 FY 2005 % Change:
Actual Adopted Proposed '04 to '05
Personnel $774,537 $831,866 $861,784 4%
Non-Personnel 200,860 199,600 205,407 3%
Subtotal Expenditures 975,397 1,031,466 1,067,191 3%
Intra-County Charges (418,139) (265,000) (265,000) -
Total Expenditures $557,258 $766,466 $802,191 5%
Authorized FTEs 16.5 16.5 16.5
Funded FTEs 16.5 16.5 16.5

SIGNIFICANT BUDGET HIGHLIGHTS:

  • Increase in personnel costs reflects normal salary and benefits adjustments ($29,918).

PERFORMANCE MEASURES:

FY 2001 Actual FY 2002 Actual FY 2003 Actual FY 2004 Estimate FY 2005
Estimate 		FY 2005 Goal
Mission Outcome Measures
Estimated bills (per 100,000 sent) 642 121 347 150 50 50
Percentage of bills sent according to schedule 86% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Customer Measures
Corrected bills due to misreads (per 100,000 sent) 0.7 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3
Corrected bills due to corrected estimates (per 100,000 bills sent) 0.2 0.1 0.6 0.3 0.1 0.1
Workload Measures
Total monthly and quarterly bills sent per year 160,215 160,436 160,624 161,000 161,000 161,000
  • Actual readings are done for all bills except in the event of weather or staffing issues where an estimated reading is used.
  • The number of estimated bills in FY 2003 was the result of unusually inclement weather and turnover of meter reader personnel. Meter readers must go through extensive training curves, the completion of which may not coincide with the billing cycle.
  • The utilities and refuse billing was migrated from post-card format to letter-sized billing including a reply envelope in FY 2004.

FUTURE BUDGET CONSIDERATIONS:

  • Technology improvements may require new investments in hardware and software.
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