The City Council on Tuesday agreed to pay a California firm $120,000 on a one-year contract to aid helping interpret data from the water company for use in sewer bills.
Enco is the same firm that formerly handled the sewer billing for the city and drew a host of complaints.
The city in 2015 cut ties with Enco and began issuing the sewer bills itself.
However, Finance Director Daisy Madison said interpreting the water data is complex and help was needed from the outside firm.
Councilman Ken Smith asked that the staff take steps to begin to take over the duties and that the city pay the company $10,000 a month for no longer than the year's contract. Ms. Madison said the city is working toward that goal.
Under the contract, Enco is "to perform quality control measures on water usage data, to ensure accurate sewer billing, and to provide online bill pay files wherein data will be delivered in a format uploadable to the city's utility billing system."
Tennessee American Water Company at one time included the sewer bill along with its water bill. However, it discontinued doing so - causing the cities to have to scramble to set up a system to do so.