St. Pete hires consultant to review water billing system after complaints

The council voted unanimously Thursday to spend $125,000 on an independent management review of the billing and collections department.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — After months of frustration and confusion over unusually high water bills, the St. Petersburg City Council has approved hiring an outside consultant to investigate what’s gone wrong inside the city’s utility billing system.

The council voted unanimously Thursday to spend $125,000 on an independent management review of the billing and collections department — a move many hope will finally bring relief to residents still struggling with unresolved billing issues.

Council members say the decision comes after a year of complaints from residents whose bills jumped from just a few dozen dollars to several thousand. The problem spiked after hurricanes Helene and Milton but has persisted long after the storms passed. Between July 2024 and April 2025, the city adjusted more than 12,000 bills to correct discrepancies.

For Carol Crawford, who owns a small rental property in St. Petersburg, that transparency can’t come soon enough. She’s spent the last year fighting a bill for more than $6,000, despite having no leaks and decades of consistent water usage around $50 a month.

“They don’t listen to logic,” Crawford said. “I have 40 years’ worth of bills that show my average is about $50 a month, and all of a sudden I get bills for $1,000 or $2,500. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Crawford says she’s gone through every step the city asked — hiring a plumber, filing forms, and even appearing before the city’s water review board.

“It’s been very difficult,” she said. “This has been hanging over my head for a year now. I’ve had to go back and forth just to make sure the water doesn’t get shut off.”

After months of what she calls “dead ends,” Crawford says she supports the idea of bringing in an outside expert to get a fresh look at the city’s billing system.

“They can’t see the forest through the trees,” she said. “Hopefully someone from the outside will realize there’s a problem and fix it — and if they can’t figure out what’s wrong, they need to just let people walk away from these awful bills.”

City leaders say they’ve processed thousands of leak adjustments and provided more than $1.7 million in relief. They’re also rolling out a new billing software system in mid-2026, the first major upgrade in more than 25 years.

But some council members — and residents like Crawford — warn that installing new software before fixing the old system’s underlying problems could make things worse.

“They should wait,” Crawford said. “There’s a lot of people out there that still haven’t resolved their issues.”

The resolution doesn’t specify when the review will begin, but the $125,000 for the consultant is already in the city’s budget. 

For residents like Crawford, the hope is that this time, the review leads to real answers — and real relief.

“I’ll be doing a little happy dance if I finally get a bill with the right amount,” she said.