The council voted unanimously Thursday to spend $125,000 on an independent management review of the billing and collections department.<\/p>\n
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 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\u2019s gone wrong inside the city\u2019s utility billing system.<\/p>\n
The council voted unanimously Thursday to spend $125,000 on an independent management review of the billing and collections department \u2014 a move many hope will finally bring relief to residents still struggling with unresolved billing issues.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
For Carol Crawford, who owns a small rental property in St. Petersburg, that transparency can\u2019t come soon enough. She\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t listen to logic,\u201d Crawford said. \u201cI have 40 years\u2019 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\u2019t make any sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crawford says she\u2019s gone through every step the city asked \u2014 hiring a plumber, filing forms, and even appearing before the city\u2019s water review board.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been very difficult,\u201d she said. \u201cThis has been hanging over my head for a year now. I\u2019ve had to go back and forth just to make sure the water doesn\u2019t get shut off.\u201d<\/p>\n
After months of what she calls \u201cdead ends,\u201d Crawford says she supports the idea of bringing in an outside expert to get a fresh look at the city\u2019s billing system.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can\u2019t see the forest through the trees,\u201d she said. \u201cHopefully someone from the outside will realize there\u2019s a problem and fix it \u2014 and if they can\u2019t figure out what\u2019s wrong, they need to just let people walk away from these awful bills.\u201d<\/p>\n
City leaders say they\u2019ve processed thousands of leak adjustments and provided more than $1.7 million in relief. They\u2019re also rolling out a new billing software system in mid-2026, the first major upgrade in more than 25 years.<\/p>\n
But some council members \u2014 and residents like Crawford \u2014 warn that installing new software before fixing the old system\u2019s underlying problems could make things worse.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey should wait,\u201d Crawford said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people out there that still haven\u2019t resolved their issues.\u201d<\/p>\n
The resolution doesn\u2019t specify when the review will begin, but the $125,000 for the consultant is already in the city\u2019s budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For residents like Crawford, the hope is that this time, the review leads to real answers \u2014 and real relief.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be doing a little happy dance if I finally get a bill with the right amount,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The council voted unanimously Thursday to spend $125,000 on an independent management review of the billing and collections…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-7381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}