CADIZ — Cadiz officials hope more accurate water meter readings will result from using new hand-held meter readers and the purchase of new billing software.

Ted Andrzejewski, village administrator, said the water department began utilizing the new hand-held readers Oct. 1 for the beginning of this month’s water bill cycle.

“With the new meter readers we will get faster and more accurate readings and, combined with the new billing software, we should get more accurate billing and revenue for the water and sewer department,” he said.

Council recently approved the purchase of new water billing software. Andrzejewski said the price was much lower than the village originally anticipated.

“Instead of $30,000, which is what I was expecting, the price came in at $17,500,” he said.

Andrzejewski said the new software in combination with the new meter reading devices will give the village a more accurate and efficient billing and reporting system. There are a lot of errors in the village’s current billing software, he said.

“People aren’t being billed correctly,” he said. “Based on the amount of water usage, we feel there are errors in the residents’ bills, and the software will correct those errors.”

Residents will not be charged a higher fee, Andrzejewski said. The bills will only reflect a more accurate representation of each household’s water usage.

Additionally, the software provides residents with more payment options by allowing them to pay their bills online, he said. Officials are hoping to have the software installed by Jan. 1.

Earlier this year, the village also installed 23 new meters due to some of the old meters not reading properly, which led to some residents only being charged the minimum instead of the correct amount.

Village leaders hope that with more accurate readings revenue will increase.

In other news, the street department continues to pave various roadways throughout the village.

Andrzejewski said the street department has paved three roadways with more in the works. Thus far, the street department has completed paving on the alley between Spring and North streets, the alley between Park Avenue and Grant Street, and Buffalo Street between East Market and Spring streets. The village is working on completing paving on Lincoln Street and Olive Avenue as well.

“If we have more money left over, we’ll look at doing another alley,” he asid. “After we did the first two alleys, which were big alleys, we wanted to concentrate on doing some streets for the residents.”