Residents of St. Petersburg, Fla. have been raising concerns for over a year about exorbitant water bills, prompting city council members to initiate a management review of the city’s billing and collections department.
On Thursday, during a Budget, Finance and Taxation Committee meeting, the council acknowledged the ongoing issues causing public unrest.
“Our primary duty on the city council is to ensure effective city management and hold the administration accountable for any evident problems,” stated Matthew Weidner, an attorney and leader of the Eden Isle Civic Association. “In yesterday’s meeting, it was recognized that there’s an issue, yet no tangible solutions have been proposed.”
Council member Brandi Gabbard, who put forward the idea for a management review, pointed out that resident complaints keep mounting and credited media for shedding light on the issue.
“Hearing from residents continuously, compounded by media attention, propels us, as City Council, to delve deeper into this matter,” Gabbard remarked.
Last month, 8 On Your Side reached out to city officials regarding the possibility of an independent audit on water billing and adjustments, following consistent reports of residents facing multi-thousand-dollar monthly bills, with one even surpassing $50,000, and another reaching $300,000 before the hurricane season last year.
City records show that in March, council approved a $65,000 contract for consultants to study billing problems tied to hurricanes Helene and Milton.
Weidner said taxpayers are tired of paying for reports without solutions.
“They don’t need to hire consultants and spend another hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money,” he said. “They need to have staff come in and explain it to city council.”
City administrators said a new billing software known as Tyler is expected to roll out in mid-2026 to help prevent future errors. Council Chair Copley Gerdes, however, cautioned against launching an evaluation while that system is still being rolled out.
“The snapshot of billing and collections, and then we’re drastically changing the operations of billing collections because of a new software and implementation of which,” Gerdes said.
Weidner and other residents argue that the city shouldn’t move forward with new technology until it’s transparent about what went wrong with the current system.
“Until they are honest with the public about what happened with the existing billing system, they had no business rolling out a new one,” he said.
The full council is expected to vote on the management review.
