After discussing the problems that have brought about large losses to the town of Century through the gas department, council members voted approval to require Century Gas Superintendent Wally Kellette to be present at every council meeting until the gas issues are resolved.
“It looks like the water and sewer were profitable for January and year to date,” said Councilwoman Ann Brooks. “The gas fund lost $15,225 for the month of January and has lost $57,482 year to date.
The garbage fund has a profit of $4,450 and year to date, or four months is $7,697. The General Fund has a loss of $16,136 for month of January, but year-to-date profit is $117,211, which I think we can attribute to CTA (Capital Trust Agency) funds of $139,877 we have received.”
Council Luis Gomez said the town should be seeing progress with the new meters, but Mayor Hawkins said none of the meters are installed, because the town is waiting to learn how to do the billing system.
“We've been fighting to try to fix the problems with the gas department and I understand it is the thorn in the side,” said Councilman Luis Gomez. “But we need to start monitoring to see if it is profitable to continue from the path we are doing. We should start seeing some results on the decisions we made on the meters.”
“We have to get a grip on the billing but even if we don't get a grip on the billing, you can install new meters and still have bad billing,” said Hawkins. “They are getting them ready to be installed.”
Gas Superintendent Wally Kellette said the gate station has been there for about a month, but the town has been down about a month and they will get to it as soon as they can.
“We based our budget this year for the gas department on those meters being in, and we upped the revenue we projected because this was going to be the cold months,” said Councilwoman Ann Brooks. “If we don't have those meters in in the cold months, which are almost over, things are going to be a lot worse than we projected.”
Council members
Brooks read the loss this year is $57,000 and last year's was $165,000. She pointed out that was for four months, but if you do the math, $172,000, which will be a larger loss than last year.
Kellette said the prison meter wasn't corrected until late December, and he said those numbers will start to go down significantly every month. He said they are addressing the customers who have been receiving gas and not being billed also, and accredited the losses to a new billing system and new billing clerk. He said employees are going house to house and that the reports and information that are in the system are inaccurate. He said learning how to pull reports correctly will help solve the issues.
Brooks asked Kellette about an annual report that goes to the Public Service Commission which discloses the amount of unaccounted gas for a municipality.
“It was 58 percent prior to December,” said Kellette. “After December, with the prison meter being addressed and repaired, it is down to 14 percent.” Kellette said he believes there are many other meters in the areas that are not working properly and that Century residents are calling almost daily to ask about where their bill is.
“The unaccounted for gas is 2 to 3 percent, normally, according to the state attorney,” said Brooks.
Kellette said he believes the town can get to that.
Brooks made a motion to require the gas superintendent to be at every council meeting, as long as Century has a gas department until things are better. The council voted unanimously and the motion carried.
