When it happened remains a mystery, but Jim Thorpe Borough is a full month behind in its billing for water and sewer.

When a bill goes out in May, it's actually for the customer's water consumption in March.Council members discussed ways last week to get its receivables back under control.In his first meeting after succeeding Betsy Ahner, who resigned from council in April due to health reasons, Councilman Curtis Jackson proposed sending out the bills a few days early each month as opposed to double billing customers for one month."To get that back we can't just finish up one month and turn around and run the next month," he said. "Residents would get two bills within 3-5 days of each other and that isn't acceptable. I think each month we should bring the billing cycle in 4 to 7 days. It would take us 3 to 4 months, but we'd get back to where we need to be."When everything is caught up, the borough would like meters to be read on the last day of a month, have the bills run on the first day of the following month and get those bills to residents within five days.Borough officials said they planned to check with the billing software company to see if they could track things back to when a month was missed."We also need to check with the billing company, but if we do go this route, I think each bill would have the same grace period it does now no matter when it is run," Jackson said.Water issues have plagued the borough for years.Last year, Engineer Kim Mazur reported that the borough could not account for 45 percent of its water.The borough paid $4,000 to find out if it was due to a leak.Several small leaks were detected and fixed, according to a report at the September 2014 council meeting.In March 2015, a female questioned the water quality in her grandparents' Center Street home."The filter is filthy 30 minutes after they put a new one in," she said.Mazur said that issue seems to be under control after borough employees simulated a flush of the entire residence.Bringing the billing cycle up to date will also help with the borough's revenue stream, Jackson said."Right now you have an entire month's worth of money out on the street when it should be with the borough," he explained.Council President Greg Strubinger said he's hopeful changes to the billing procedure will get the borough "moving in the right direction on this."