Bielarski sends letter explaining overcharges on GRU bills

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – GRU CEO Ed Bielarski responded today to a February 24 letter from Mayor Harvey Ward that was sent at the request of the City Commission after complaints were received about large solid waste and stormwater fees in the January billing cycle.

For many years, GRU has included City solid waste and stormwater charges on utility bills, and according to Ward’s letter, customers reported in early February that “both the solid waste and stormwater charges, which should remain static from month to month on each account… had increased by several percent in a seemingly random fashion.” Ward called for a “swift and clear public effort to both credit the accounts what is owed and to identify and repair whatever processes led to the billing errors.”

Ward’s letter asked for the following information:

• The number of accounts affected;
• The total amount overcharged by category;
• How overcharges will be made whole;
• What caused this to happen; and
• What measures are in place to prevent this from happening in the future.

In his letter, Bielarski apologized for any inconvenience during the January billing cycle and said he had been in contact with the City Manager’s office and Public Works Director Brian Singleton since the errors surfaced; Singleton confirmed this communication at the February 20 City Commission meeting.

Bielarski wrote that the incorrect charges “resulted from a well-meaning decision approved by the City Commission in 2023. At the time, the utility and its then governing body enacted measures to prevent customers from receiving two bills in any one month and to ensure shorter billing cycles.”

Bielarski wrote that those measures “caused the billing system to automatically prorate charges for non-metered services when we began a new meter reading calendar in January. Non-metered services such as [solid waste], stormwater, and lighting are fixed charges and should not be prorated. We will be crediting the amount prorated.”

Bielarski submitted the following answers to Ward’s questions:

• 51,796 customers received incorrect stormwater bills; 25,274 customers received incorrect solid waste bills; and 1,498 customers received incorrect rental lighting bills.
• Stormwater overcharges: $120,673.94; refuse overcharges: $133,485.84; rental lighting overcharges: $63,520.30.
• Affected customers will receive a credit on their March or April bills.
• The meter reading and billing calendar is determined by a “dynamic scheduler” that is part of the billing software; GRU has worked with the billing vendor to fix these errors to ensure this will not happen again next January.