ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The St. Petersburg City Council approved resolutions on Thursday which give some relief to residents who received high water bills after their homes flooded.

What You Need To Know

  • Data shows high water bills coincide with last year's hurricanes 

  • The St. Petersburg City Council passed resolutions Thursday to give residents some relief 

  • The Utility Department wants to switch from mechanical meters to digital ones

  • The City Council is expected to vote on changing the ordinance on March 6

“Having this data is really important,” said City Council member Lisset Hanewicz. “It kind of shows that the problem happened after the storms.”

Members of the City Council was presented solutions to the problem by Utility Department leaders during a committee of the whole meeting earlier in the day. To provide more flexibly with city codes, one resolution calls for a flooded home to be considered a “leak,” according to billing manager Lauren Gewandter.

“How we’re going to count it as a repair is when the home is no longer flooded and their consumption has clearly gone back down to their normal average, we would like to consider that a repair,” she said. “The second resolution we would like to present is mechanical to digital meters.”

Gewandter said the resolution would allow for residents who have mechanical water meters and see extremely high consumption, with no leak on their property, can apply for an adjustment. The city also plans to speed up and prioritize switching the analog water meters to digital.

“We believe having more digital meters in our city would provide more accuracy,” said Gewandter. “The benefits that it also has is if the city is closed for operations due to a storm we don’t have to skip a beat.”

Leaky toilets can also cause high water bills and typically tend to be the problem, according to customer support manager David Flintom.

The City Council is looking at changing two ordinances to allow for adjustments requests during a declared state of emergency and allowing for water to be recalculated at the lower Tampa Bay Water rate. The council is expected to pass the first reading of the proposed ordinance changes on March 6.

“Everyone wants to solve this issue, administration, water resources, we’re all in it,” said Hanewicz. “We want an answer and I want the public to know that we are working on solving this issue and we’re all going to take responsibility for it.”