Evans City residents who pay their water bills — and pay them on time — have grounds for being angry.

About a year has passed since the borough council passed an ordinance placing the responsibility for rental units’ water bills on landlords, thus removing that responsibility from tenants. But the council has been slow in implementing that new setup, and the local water and sewer authority has lost revenue as a result of tenants who have moved out of the borough without first paying their water bill.

According to Tim Schoeffel, authority chairman, the authority has about $20,000 in outstanding bills from all categories of unpaid accounts. For a town of Evans City’s size, that is a significant amount of money that must be aggressively pursued. Why the council has been so slow in actually getting the new landlord billing setup in motion is puzzling.

Friction the council might be getting from landlords about their new responsibility isn’t grounds for delaying implemention of the new system.

Councilman Paul Foster said at a meeting on Aug. 22 that, in addition to passing the motion about a year ago, the borough secretary has been in contact with the tax collector’s office to determine everyone who owns rental buildings in the borough. He said a letter that will be sent to landlords about the change has been drafted, but it still must be reviewed and voted on by the council.

It shouldn’t have taken a year to get to this point in the implementation process — and apparently the borough still doesn’t know all of the landlords’ identities. Borough water customers who routinely pay their bills on time should join with Schoeffel and demand that the council stop procrastinating.

Schoeffel put some of the blame for the situation as it currently exists on a lack of communication between the council and the borough secretary regarding sending the bills to the landlords. He said the problem is exacerbated by multiple customers being in one building and using one line.

The council must stop sitting on the water bill issue. It shouldn’t take more than 60 days — actually, it should take a lot less — for the billing system in question to finally be fully operational.