Utility Billing Delays Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Utility Billing Delays
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

The City of Banning acknowledges the frustration and inconvenience that recent utility billing system issues have caused for our customers. We understand the impact this has had on residents and want to assure you that resolving these challenges is our highest priority.

This FAQ was created to provide clear answers to the most common questions we’ve received and to address concerns raised by the community. The City remains committed to transparency, accountability, and open communication as we work diligently to restore confidence in our utility billing system.
 

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why is the City having utility billing issues?
The City has relied on its legacy utility billing software system since 1992. The system has become outdated and time-consuming to operate. For example, processing one month of utility consumption typically requires an entire month of staff effort.

In November 2024, the City introduced a new utility billing software; however, the implementation was not successful. By late December 2024, the City made the decision to revert to the legacy system. Because several related systems had been modified or replaced to accommodate the new software, it took several months to reconfigure those systems to fully resume operations with the legacy system.

During this transition period, no utility bills for water, sewer and electric were sent to customers, resulting in the utility billing delays. Utility billing was restored after an approximate six month pause on billing, resulting in the November, 2024 consumption being billed in April, 2025.

2. What is causing the delays in resolving the utility billing issues?
Catching up to the current billing cycle has been challenging due to limitations with the City’s legacy system. These challenges were compounded by turnover in several key positions within the Finance Department, which oversees Utility Billing operations.

3. What is the City doing to resolve the issue and prevent it from reoccurring?
City leadership has allocated and trained additional staff from multiple departments to assist with the manual review of more than 11,000 utility accounts per monthly bill. This added support has already reduced the time needed to process one month of consumption billing from four weeks down to two weeks.

The City continues to seek solutions, such as software upgrades, to make the utility billing process more efficient and to provide more visibility for our customers. Any new implementations will be fully vetted strategic planning and will include a fully integrated implementation team (consultants and staff), workflow development, data migration and validation plan, plan for parallel runs before decommissioning existing systems, continued vendor and internal support coverage, staff training and post implementation review. 


4. How does the City know how much consumption I used if they are billing for consumption from several months ago?
The City installed Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) several years ago. These meters, for both water and electric services, record usage in short intervals and automatically transmit the data to the City’s Meter Data Management System (MDMS).

As a result, all consumption data since the billing issues began in November 2024 has been accurately recorded and stored in the MDMS, ensuring that customers are billed based on their actual usage for the month they are being billed for.

On the City’s utility bill, a date range is shown next to the “Electric Monthly Charge” and “Water Monthly Charge.” This date range indicates the period during which the consumption occurred and the time frame on which the charges are based.

5. Why was auto-pay suspended?
Auto-pay has been temporarily suspended due to an unexpected issue. Auto-pay transactions are programmed to occur on the bill’s due date. With bills being sent out sooner (2 weeks instead of 4 weeks), customers were receiving new bills before the previous bill’s due date had passed.

This would have pushed the auto-pay transaction date out to the newest bill due date, eventually resulting in multiple bills being paid all at once on a single date once the billing is caught up. Suspending auto-pay prevents customers from facing an unexpectedly large withdrawal. 

Auto-pay will be restored once the City is current on the backlog of bills.

6. When will the utility payment issues be resolved?
The City is working diligently to restore normal billing operations and anticipates being fully caught up in early February, 2026.


7. Can I still pay my utility bills online?
Yes. Customers can check and pay their current utility balance online here: https://banningca.gov/137/Utility-Billing

8. Are there any additional fees for using the online payment portal?
No. Transaction fees are temporarily waived until the utility billing issues are resolved.

9. Will I be penalized for late payments due to the billing issues?
No. Late fees are temporarily waived until the utility billing issues are resolved. 

Once billing is restored to normal operations the City will offer payment plans and extensions to help manage higher balances.

10. Have there been rate increases during the utility billing delays?
Yes, there have been pre-approved and pre-planned rate increase for water, wastewater and electric rates.

Water and wastewater rate increases were approved by City Council via Ordinance No. 1587 approved on November 8, 2022, and included annual rate increases effective each year on January 1^st, beginning in 2023. The last rate increase approved related to water and wastewater will become effective on January 1, 2027. It should be noted that an additional increase for wastewater rates included in Council’s approval took effect on July 1, 2024.

Due to financial challenges with the Electric utility resulting from a lack of rate increase (last one occurred in 2013) and lack of external financing for capital infrastructure, City Council approved Resolution 2024-175 on November 12, 2024 which included an emergency rate increase that became effective 11/1/2024. Subsequently, after a Cost of Service Analysis, which began in December, 2024, City Council approved rates increases that would become effective annually on November 1^st beginning in 2025 and the last one set to occur in 2029.

The abovementioned rate increases have led to higher than normal billing amounts, although consumption amounts have remained steady as compared to the previous year. 

Contact Information
For questions or to request assistance with your utility bill, please contact our Customer Service Representatives: 

- Phone: (951) 922-3185
- Hours: Monday–Friday (8:00 AM to 5:00 PM)
- In Person: City Hall, 99 E. Ramsey Street, Banning, CA 92220
- Email

Please know that our Customer Service Representatives are here to assist you. While they were not involved in the issues that led to the utility billing challenges, they have taken on much of the impact as the front-line point of contact for our community. We sincerely appreciate your patience, support, and understanding as we work diligently to resolve the billing issues.