City of Guelph to assume water billing services and additional costs

Meter-reading, invoicing and collections for water services to be handled in-house as of 2025 after Alectra decides to no longer provide service

Guelphtoday.com
Jan. 10, 2023

Guelph residents will soon be on the hook for a new utility bill, though much of the overall cost to customers isn’t expected to rise sharply.

There are, however, still many details to be worked out.

Alectra, the local electricity distribution company, is set to stop providing water meter reading, billing and collection services on behalf of the municipality at the end of 2024, prompting a decision to handle those things in-house.

That comes with an anticipated one-time cost of between $3 million and $4.5 million, including $2.1 million to update software currently used by Alectra, explains in a city staff report released on Friday

In addition, the annual cost of administration is expected to be about $250,000 more than would otherwise be paid to Alectra.

“As further developments of this transition occur, every effort to find efficiencies for this service integration will be explored as part of the scope of this project, such as a campaign to promote electronic bill presentment options as desired by the customer,” the report states.

During the next few months, city staff will strive to create an operating model and detailed budget for water billing services. Those details are expected to be presented to council as part of the 2024 to 2027 multi-year budget.

City officials learned of Alectra’s plan to drop the service in 2021 and worked with the company’s other municipal owners -- the cities of Hamilton, Markham and Vaughan -- to procure an in-house billing model they could each use for their respective residents.