A new audit of EPB concludes that the utility underbilled the city of Chattanooga for street lighting, but that claim was immediately challenged by Chattanooga’s internal auditor.
While EPB has repeatedly claimed that mistakes in how it handled the replacement of obsolete streetlights resulted in underbilling for taxpayers, Chattanooga’s internal auditor, Stan Sewell, said the opposite is true.
Both parties agree that when EPB removed obsolete mercury vapor streetlights from the poles, it failed to account for some of them properly, continuing to charge the city for the energy-hogging old lights, even though it had already installed more energy-efficient high-pressure sodium lights.
EPB has said that though it did improperly bill taxpayers for the mercury vapor lights’ energy usage, the fact that it failed to bill the city for the new high pressure sodium lights – which are more expensive to buy – essentially canceled out that mistake.
In a release today, EPB said that an audit by Mauldin & Jenkins found that EPB underbilled taxpayers by nearly $686,000, and that it planned to collect $178,314 from the city to cover the discrepancy.