ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WFLA) — After more than a year of resident complaints over sky-high water bills, St. Petersburg City council members are moving forward with a management review of the city’s billing and collections department.

The decision came Thursday during a Budget, Finance and Taxation Committee meeting, where council members acknowledged the persistent problems that have drawn public frustration.

“The core job of city council is to manage this city and to hold an administration responsible when clearly they have a problem,” said Matthew Weidner, an attorney and president of the Eden Isle Civic Association. “Yesterday in council, they talked about the fact that they know there’s a problem, but there’s nothing concrete. There’s nothing specific.”

Council member Brandi Gabbard, who proposed the management review, said complaints from residents continue to flood in and credited media coverage for keeping the issue in the public eye.

“I think now, as we continue to hear from residents, as unfortunately, the media continues to bring this issue to light,” Gabbard said. “We at City Council continue to be asked by our residents to dig into this issue.”

Last month, 8 On Your Side emailed city leaders asking if they would consider an independent audit of water billing and adjustment practices. That message came after months of reports showing residents receiving bills of several thousand dollars per month, including one case exceeding $50,000, and a $300,000 bill even before last year’s hurricanes.

City records show that in March, council approved a $65,000 contract for consultants to study billing problems tied to hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Weidner said taxpayers are tired of paying for reports without solutions.

“They don’t need to hire consultants and spend another hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money,” he said. “They need to have staff come in and explain it to city council.”

City administrators said a new billing software known as Tyler is expected to roll out in mid-2026 to help prevent future errors. Council Chair Copley Gerdes, however, cautioned against launching an evaluation while that system is still being rolled out.

“The snapshot of billing and collections, and then we’re drastically changing the operations of billing collections because of a new software and implementation of which,” Gerdes said.

Weidner and other residents argue that the city shouldn’t move forward with new technology until it’s transparent about what went wrong with the current system.

“Until they are honest with the public about what happened with the existing billing system, they had no business rolling out a new one,” he said.

The full council is expected to vote on the management review.