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Smart water meters, or meters that can relay your water-use wirelessly, are the future. Officials say the new meters can help customers conserve and even send alerts when waterline leaks are detected but installing the technology is critical to its success.  Water billing was brought up at Thursday night’s public forum, hosted by Councilmember Chris Cate, where hundreds of homeowners who had questions about their water bills attended.  “Every single time the water bill will come,” one homeowner said, “I will open it and I will be like, what is going on?”

Hundreds of frustrated and angry residents turned out Thursday night for a city-held public forum at Mira Mesa Senior Center to address surging water bills — a long-simmering controversy that has now reached a boiling point. For more than three hours, one resident after another stepped to the microphone to address officials with the Public Utilities Department. Nearly all had stories of being charged for water they didn’t use, causing their bills to skyrocket by hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars.

When San Diego city water customers receive a water bill, and they feel the bill is charging them for more water than they used, their options for challenging the bill are limited. One of those options is to have their water meter tested. NBC 7 Responds wanted to know if the city’s water meter testing is treating San Diego customers fairly. After sharing the test results and the city’s water meter testing process with one of the country’s meter testing experts, he said he could not say the tests performed by San Diego’s Public Utilities Department were done accurately.

The Government Finance Officers Association’s federal liaison center is warning some members against using interest rate swaps and derivatives as alternatives to advance refundings. In a recently published alert, GFOA noted that the tax law changes enacted in December prohibit the use of tax-exempt advance refundings as of Jan. 1, 2018. As a result, issuers are looking for alternatives. “Issuers should work with their advisors to understand potential new risks and other considerations that may accompany these alternatives,” GFOA said in the alert, adding it, “cautions many entities against entering into swap or derivative agreements.”