Review Determines City’s Water Sales Have Declined

A review of the city of Bourbon’s water meters and sales by Monty Todd, the former public works director, found that all meters are in working order and usage has significantly declined over the past five years.

Sales have fell by 4 million gallons since 2016.

Todd on Tuesday presented his review to the Bourbon Board of Aldermen, noting that some of the city’s biggest customers have cutback on usage.

Todd was hired over the summer to review the electronic water meters and ensure they are being read accurately.

Bourbon has seen water sales fall $20,000 short each year since the meters were installed in 2017-18.

The city has even raised rates twice in the last five, but Todd concluded that it can’t make up for declining water sales.

Todd met with City Clerk Cathy Bremer and city employees Darci Satterfield and Mark McEuen to determine the shortfall.

The first item on Todd’s checklist was to make sure the meters are properly working.

Todd and public works employees manually read 50 meters to make sure they were correct. They also met with a specialist at reading the meters.

“The meters are reading right,” Todd said.

Next, Todd and his team identified “20 to 25” large usage meters and settled on 15. They compared the previous budget to 2016, finding that 4 million fewer gallons have been sold since then.

The biggest consumers are Paramount Apparel and the Crawford County R-1 School District. Todd pointed out that the district is going one fewer day per week than they were five years ago, which is attributed to the usage going down. The school’s sewer sales have falenl as well.

Paramount also is using less water than they were five years ago.

One of the biggest water consumers was Circle N, which was using 20,000 gallons per month. The restaurant has been closed for the past few years.

And with people staying at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, Todd found that usage did not actually increase.

Todd said they will continue to monitor the situation and he’s hoping the 2022-23 budget year will provide an increase and answer “why is this not making any sense?”