Water billing woes

The water billing thing came up again Tuesday. The city has over $600,000 in bad debt from customers who have not paid their water bills. Some of these bills are several years old, and some of the people are long gone.
Kanyon Gingher wants the city to collect on those bills. She has been trying to help pay down some of those bills by selling cookies. She as raised more than $900 to pay down some of the bills. It is a start and she is doing something positive to try to help solve the problem.
That is good activism. She complained a lot about the water billing situation, and is doing what she can to help out.
The city is already in a state setoff program that tries to collect some of the bad debt.
Commissioner Dotty Smith introduced the idea at Tuesday's meeting to try to see what could be done to collect on the bad debt. One idea is to use city attorney Tamara Niles, but using a lawyer for that kind of thing can get really expensive.
Another idea is a collection agency of some sort.
At the meeting Tuesday, city staff agreed to get more information and bring back a report to a future meeting as to what could be done.
Commissioner Patrick McDonald did not like the fact that it was brought up at the end of a regular meeting. He felt the commission was being blindsided and that it should have been brought up in a worksession first.
He said he thinks the idea itself may be good, but he just didn't like the procedure.

City Manager Steve Archer and administration head Lane Massey are not as excited about the prospects. There was a long discussion after the meeting between Archer, Massey, commissioner Smith and Kanyon. I went along for the ride.
(kanyon is proof that they do listen. you too could have such a discussion on an issue you are concerned about.)
Anyways, Archer and Massey feel like going after these bad debts - beyond the state setoff programm - is treating the symptom and does not address the real problem. The real problem being that there are a lot of people who just dont pay their bills.
Massey was saying you could collect $100,000 with an agency, but by that time you would have that much or more in new bad debt.
Massey said several months ago that there are people who just leave their bills behind. He said there are also people who will wait until their water is shut off and they would send a different family member in to get a new account and start the process all over again.
Even with the $600,000 in bad debt from several years, it is still a small percentage of customers who do not pay their bills on time.
Their answer was the $50 fine for turning on or off your water, and shutting people off after five days. It was a bit harsh, they admit, but it did work. Late payments and shutoffs went way down.
Since then there was a great public outcry and the fees were reduced to $35 and you get more time to pay now.
Massey said the late payments and shutoffs have been increasing since the city backed off its tougher policy. Kanyon countered that it could be because more people are out of work and the economy has worsened.