Question-and-Answer Session
[Operator Instructions].
Nicholas DeBenedictis - Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Brop, we’re ready to accept questions.
Operator
We’ll take our first question from Heike Doerr at Janney Montgomery Scott
Heike Doerr - Janney Montgomery Scott
Good morning, everyone.
Nicholas DeBenedictis - Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning, Heike.
Heike Doerr - Janney Montgomery Scott
I wanted to follow-up on the efficiency ratio. Nick, you used to speak historically on how many basis points of improvements you expected to see in a given year? We’ve now reached on a rolling average, it’s about 42.5%. I realized that some of this is the revenue weakness. But can you talk to maybe, when do you think we’ll see this come back down? I know we used to talk in reference of being below 40%.
Nicholas DeBenedictis - Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Well, part of the concern this quarter, the reason it went to 42% was these, almost half of the expenses that were charged, I would call, Dave can add, in my last call one-time. They were regulatory true ups and things of that sort. The other is the fact that, the regulatory lag, if you take a look at any reasonable percentage of that $65 million and put that into your base. I think you’ll see that O&M with a revenue ratio come down pretty rapidly. So, yeah, I’m disappointed Heike, I wish it was lower but it’s something we’re going to? we still track it, so I hope you still track it, but I think if you correct for those two, it was probably flat year-over-year.
Heike Doerr - Janney Montgomery Scott
And as we look at the efficiency ratio comparison of the north versus south and the catch-up that the south has seen since you got some of these efficiencies taken care off and the operating structure is little better. Can you maybe talk about what we’ve seen there in the south?
Nicholas DeBenedictis - Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
I know that south is the whole region, our ratio is up. Pennsylvania keeps, and New Jersey keeps getting better. The north is pretty stable, north to south, but rather than going down in efficiency it’s going up for two reasons. We’ve basically had to put new people all over the place to get the thing running and it’s now stabilized, and our new President there, Chris Franklin has got all kinds of statistics and benchmarking and so on. And, but? I mean to be very honest with you, AquaSource had $12 an hour people, they weren’t getting the job done, they were reading meters from their car, therefore, the meter readings weren’t right, and we just had to redo everything in the whole company. That’s done now, we have professionals in place, trained operators at the plants and things of that sort and that was the cost.
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