Frequently Asked Questions

The Village's water and sanitary sewer facilities are operated as part of an enterprise fund.  This is a separate accounting and financial reporting mechanism for municipal services for which a fee is charged in exchange for goods or services. It allows a community to demonstrate to the public the portion of total costs of a service that is recovered through user charges and the portion that is subsidized by the tax levy, if any. With an enterprise fund, all costs of service delivery—direct, indirect, and capital costs—are identified. This allows the community to recover total service costs through user fees if it chooses. 

The water bill contains several charges that are all factors of the amount of water used, billed in 100 gallon increments.

• Operations & Maintenance - The cost to operate the entire water and sanitary sewer system used to produce and deliver water
• Infrastructure - Funding for capital improvement projects
• Lake Michigan Water - Funding for the transition to Lake Michigan Water
• LCTC - Lake County Treatment Charge passed on by the County that treats the Village's waste water

The reverse side of the water bill provides additional details on the cost per 100 gallons.

The online portal gives you the ability to monitor your water usage.  Your water statement will contain all of the information you need to sign into your account.  Access to the online portal is available here.  Please take a few minutes to review the instructional video to learn the necessary details of logging on to the portal for the first time.

Each water meter's radio frequency device has a unique identification number, which is transmitted along with the meter reading. The unique number is compared to your account record to ensure a match.  This reading is deemed more accurate than visually reading the meter.  Some of the newly installed Sensus iPearl water meters have been pulled for testing by an independent laboratory and have shown to be 99.57% accurate.

AMR stands for Automated Meter Reading.  The Village is replacing existing water meters with new meters that utilize AMR technology to remotely read customer meters and relay the data to the Villages’ Billing Office, providing timely and reliable reading without having to gain access to your property.