City Owes Skechers Nearly $243,000 for Miscalculations

Skechers USA will have to wait another two weeks for approval of its $242,866.48 overpayment reimbursement from the city of Manhattan Beach after City Council moved the item Tuesday night from its June 5 agenda to June 19.

As the last item on a jampacked agenda Tuesday, the overpayment reimbursement for sewer and water meter reading errors made by city staff was pushed to the next City Council meeting along with a discussion of the centennial committee, its finances and any future centennial events and an update of the city's strategic plan and objectives.

With the clock moving closer to their 11:30 p.m. meeting end time, the five-member council voted unanimously to address these items on the June 19 agenda.

"It's a clear case of an overbilling that wasn't picked up on except initially by the customer," MB City Manager David Carmany told MB Patch Friday. "Our position has been we want to make this right."

The meter misreads began in July 2007 and ended in April this year, he said. "I first heard about this about a month ago," said Carmany. "I think they'd [Skechers] had it re-read a few times over that time period but it was always just reconfirmed. It wasn't confirmed that it was off a decimal point."

The situation that occurred was a misread by a city staffer. Said Carmany, "It [the meter] wasn't read properly. They didn't pick a decimal point up so the read was off by a factor of 10. So instead of billing $400 or $500 a month, it was $4,000 or $5,000 a month."

Carmany said Skechers had questioned the bill a few times during the five years but the investigation always yielded the same result; all was OK. He said a new facilities manager for Skechers "took a step back and said, 'Wait. A water bill of $4,000 or $5,000 a month is not possible.'"

The 3-inch Sensus turbine water meter in use at the Skechers facility at 330 South Sepulveda Boulevard was a “one of a kind meter” in the city's system, according to Carmany, and has been replaced.

Because the misread continued and was deemed correct, the customary electronic notification of possible meter-read errors was not triggered.

The reimbursement will come from two funds: $189,431.73 from water reserves and $53,434.75 from sewer reserves, according to a staff report.

"To address any concerns, all 389 meters 2 inches or larger, as well as all 437 1.5-inch meters, in the city have been checked for possible errors in reads, and no errors have been discovered,” said Jim Arndt, public works director.

Carmany said the city will be re-training staff who read the meters.