Audit finds Waynesville electric bills were accurate

BY CORY VAILLANCOURT POLITICS EDITOR

The results from an independent audit of the Town of Waynesville’s electric billing process are in and despite speculation to the contrary, audit findings show that no customer was charged for power they didn’t actually consume.

“I think the report we got from the audit firm is an important piece of information, part of the puzzle, if you will. What that confirmed for me is the fact that there was not one single thing that caused this issue,” said Jon Feichter, the Waynesville alderman who requested the audit. “My concerns were that there was something structurally wrong with the way the town was reading meters that resulted in some kind of significant malfunction. It appears based on the info that the auditors proved that that was not happening.”

Waynesville is one of few North Carolina towns that operates its own electric concern, buying power at cheaper wholesale rates and passing it along to customers. Back in April, the town began receiving an abnormally high number of complaints about electric bills being larger than expected.

As aldermen and town officials began to investigate the veracity of the complaints, a number of possible contributing factors were suspected but none was definitively proven to be the culprit.

Those factors included colder-than-average weather, a 5 percent rate increase passed the previous summer and staff illnesses, as well as a series of hardware and software failures.

The town immediately halted disconnections and waived late fees on overdue accounts, while a new printer was purchased, and a new bill format was introduced.

Feichter then requested a $19,000 outside evaluation by consulting firm WithersRavenel. Originally, the evaluation was to evaluate 300 residential electric and solar customers, but the firm widened that to include all of the town’s approximately 2,500 customers.

WithersRavenel was selected, in part, due to previous experience using Munis, the town’s billing software package. Data from Munis was converted into a Microsoft spreadsheet, and then sorted by customer, cycle and date.

Included in the report is a graph, outlining the sum of billed usage over the past three winters, from 2019 through 2021.

While usage for January and February of this year appeared normal, what happened in March and April wasn’t — usually a time of rapidly diminishing usage, bills issued for March didn’t decline because February and March were much colder than in 2020.

Complicating matters, a software failure on the handheld devices that town employees use to read household electric meters resulted in data loss for February.

February’s bills, issued in March, were lower than they should have been, because they were estimated using a customer’s 12month consumption average. That average is lower than what most people normally use in February, a cold-weather month.

When meters were read again in March, those cumulative figures included actual usage for February rather than estimated usage. That, coupled with a longer-than-average billing cycle and a colder-than-average March, resulted in bills that initially shocked some customers.

The final section of the report includes a list of recommendations based on observations made during the audit, including standardizing billing cycles by establishing workflow deadlines for every person who participates in the billing process and providing greater oversight of the billing technician by the town’s finance director.

“By and large, I believe the recommendations WithersRavenel made make sense. There were some policy and procedure elements that if we implemented would be one part of the whole package of action that we need to take to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Feichter said. “I am looking forward to the possibility of taking a deep look at those recommendations and if staff believes they would be helpful, I would absolutely support that.”

Beyond those recommendations, Feichter said that there are still plenty of things the town is doing to ensure that the winter of 2022 is not a repeat of the winter of 2021.

“We’re doing things above and beyond what WithersRavenel presented. We’ve purchased new handhelds. We’ve updated billing software. We’ve filled meter reader staff positions,” he said. “Taken together, those kinds of steps plus the policy and procedure recommendations WithersRavenel suggested, I am confident the mistakes that were made will not be repeated.”

Feichter said the town will remain flexible on repayment arrangements for customers having trouble with the bills.

“My concerns were that there was something structurally wrong with the way the town was reading meters that resulted in some kind of significant malfunction. It appears based on the info that the auditors proved that that was not happening.”

— Jon Feichter, Waynesville alderman

Jackson jails, senior center to get new food vendor

BY HOLLY KAYS STAFF WRITER

For the first time in six years, Jackson County will have a new vendor providing meals at its jail and senior center after commissioners voted unanimously July 20 to award the contract to Georgiabased Skillet Kitchen.

The company currently manages 35 kitchens in four states, including locations in Swain, Macon, Cherokee, Clay, McDowell, Lincoln, Cleveland and Gaston counties in North Carolina as well as several North Georgia counties, feeding 9,000 inmates 575,000 meals a week.

“We’re very qualified in this area because we have so much around here,” Skillet Vice President Matt Eubanks said during a June 13 work session. “Our district manager actually lives in Hayesville. Our territory manager lives in the general area as well. We have a lot of backup support. In the food service industry in the last year, year-and-a-half, having a backup plan has been important.”

Since 2015, Sylva-based B and Al’s LLC, owned by John Faulk, had held the kitchen contracts. The 2015 contract was good for four years, but County Manager Don Adams said he had been extending it on a year-to-year basis after its expiration.

“I’ve been in conversations with Mr. Faulk for a couple of years,” Adams said. “A couple of years ago he was really contemplating retirement at that point. I was trying to buy time to see what Mr. Faulk wanted to do. I guess it was probably around six to eight months ago it was discovered that he was still interested in proceeding forward with the contract.”

At that point Adams, Detention Center Captain Patrick McCoy and Department on Aging Director Eddie Wells sat down to discuss how to move forward, ultimately deciding to go through an informal bidding process in which they would reach out to companies with capacity to provide the service. During the June 8 work session, they presented commissioners with the four bids they had received in response.

In addition to Skillet and Faulk, the county received bids from Mountain Projects and Charlotte-based TRIO Community Meals. In the bid form, the county had asked each company to quote a price per meal for a contract that would include a minimum of 39,520 meals per year — 150 per day, five days a week — for the Department on Aging and 54,750 meals per year — 150 per day, seven days a week — for the jail. The price was to be inclusive of any non-food costs such as packaging and delivery. The companies would have access to the county’s kitchen area.

Skillet was not the lowest bidder overall, but it was the lowest bidder to provide an offer that included three hot meals per day for the jail. Skillet said it would charge $5.57 for Department on Aging meals and $5.83 for meals at the jail, which would add up to $543,092 per year at the 150-meal minimum stated for each agency. The company also outlined a sliding-scale pricing system such that per-meal prices could vary between $3.97-$8.11 for the jail and $4.98$7.04 for the department on aging depending on the number ordered.

Mountain Projects entered a lower overall bid of $521,733.30 for the minimum order, which included $5.79 per meal at the Department on Aging and $5.35 for meals at the jail. However, that $5.35 figure was for two hot meals and one cold lunch each day — the organization did not include a bid for three hot meals per day. During a June 8 work session on the issue, Adams said that serving hearty meals in the jail has an important impact on inmate behavior and safety. The current vendor, B & Al, offered a significantly higher per-meal price of $6.25 across the board, which would have cost $589,187.50 for the minimum order. The fourth bid, from TRIO Community Meals, was even higher, at $8.15 per meal.

Adams told commissioners July 13 that Skillet is willing to use employees working under the current contract to provide the services, and that the positions will offer higher pay than before, with benefits.

The new contract will become effective Oct. 1.

Jackson County Justice Center.