By Miguel Navrot
Journal Staff Writer
The owners of Santa Fe's water billing system — the $21,000-a-month program blamed for ongoing defects and billing problems — are urging city lawmakers to keep the software, government officials said Tuesday.
Representatives of Avistar Inc., a subsidiary of Public Service Company of New Mexico, are visiting with city councilors individually to promote their billing system. PNM officials declined comment on the merits of the pitch Tuesday, saying not every city lawmaker has been talked to yet.
The Avistar billing system was installed before 2000 as part of a Y2K upgrade. Since then, thousands of residential water bills have been incorrect or late, causing untold confusion among Santa Fe residents and prompting the anger of elected officials.
In January, the city Finance Committee recommended Santa Fe switch its billing system to one sold by Denver-based J.D. Edwards, which would cost taxpayers more than $400,000 for an installation that could take a year to complete.
Avistar, which has pledged to remedy the problems, is trying to persuade the City Council to reconsider the January decision, acting City Manager Jim Romero said. Romero wasn't sure how successful the talks were with lawmakers, many of whom have been critical of PNM for the ongoing problems.
"It's hard to tell," Romero said of the Avistar discussions.
Avistar representatives were pitching several approaches for Santa Fe involving various prices, PNM spokeswoman Julie Gray said. "There are several different options" being presented, said Gray.
Santa Fe's relationship with PNM stems from the city's $58 million purchase in 1995 of Sangre de Cristo Water Co. Since the buyout, the two parties have jointly operated the water utility with the intention of Santa Fe eventually taking over full control.
The city currently is scheduled to become the sole utility operator in July.
Presently, the biggest known problem with the billing system is that as much as 15 percent of the roughly 26,000 monthly customer bills aren't being handled properly, Gray said.
The computer system is "kicking out" bills determined to be irregular, because the measured water usage is unusually high or low. In turn, those bills aren't being sent out.
Avistar would "ideally" have just 5 to 8 percent of the bills tossed out, Gray said, not 15 percent.
Avistar President Blake Ridgeway in December publicly apologized for the faults, and Gray last week said the company hopes to have the problems fixed by June. "From our perspective, we're not where we want to be," Gray said.
City officials have voiced doubts over Avistar's repair goal.
"I think it's going to be hard to do," Romero said.
Councilor Cris Moore, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of New Mexico, also sounded skeptical about Avistar being able to fix the situation. Moore said he hadn't yet spoken privately with company representatives as of Tuesday afternoon, but looked forward to discussing possible legal action against Avistar.
"Frankly, I don't think they've fulfilled the terms of their contract," Moore said, adding he didn't want to continue using the system. "It doesn't work."
City officials plan to continue discussing a switch to the J.D. Edwards system. The Public Utility Committee will hear the proposal Thursday.

ABQ Journal

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