Water
Hello Dennis,
My question deals with our water billing situation. We have many dwellings in the community that are connected by one main water meter. Many of the two-unit dwellings are sub metered and many of the 3-unit dwellings are in the process. The City water bills go straight to the Association and we have a third party that reads all sub meters and submits those readings to the Association for proper allocation of gallons of use to those owners. Once all bills and readings are received, the accounting department of our management company formulates the individual bills for all owners. The billed amount shows up in our Association Dues billing statements. Then at some point later, sometimes much later, sometimes not at all, owners receive their detailed water billing statement showing the individual categories making up the whole of their individual billed amount. I am wondering if this structure effectively categorizes our Association as “landlords” and, if so, binds them to AZ Statute 33-1314?
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Rhonda,
While I do not know exactly the language of your CC&Rs relative to water billing, it sounds to me that based on the physical characteristics of the water system, the water bill is a common expense and billed out based on the usage from the subsystem meters or the size of the units. This does not make the association a landlord; it simply applies the common expenses according to the declaration. You are not subject to 33-1314.
Dennis
Thank you. I think I did a poor job of explaining our situation, but I think you did a great job of getting to the answer. It is the accounting team at our management company that receives the master bills from Phoenix since the Association is the utility customer. The accountants then use whatever calculations their spreadsheet tells them to use to render the bills to owners who are not directly billed by the City. All of this thinking now has me wondering if our management company, who renders the bills to each end user, would be considered to be the “billing entity” and would need to follow Admin Code 14-2-210?
The city or water district is the billing entity not the community manager.
Dennis