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Council adopts ordinance allowing telephonic disconnect notices; debate over voicemail vs. live contact
Summary
Council approved ordinance 4969 to allow telephonic customer contact as part of the utility disconnect notice process; council members debated whether leaving voicemail should be sufficient, and staff said paper tags would still be used when telephonic contact is impossible.
The Ellensburg City Council on Sept. 2 adopted Ordinance 4969, which amends the city’s utility collection and disconnect-notice procedures to permit telephonic notice where feasible and retain paper notice (door tags) when telephone contact is not possible. City finance staff described the change as a response to a backlog created by hand-delivering door tags to roughly 11,000 utility customers across the city’s six utility services.
A finance department staff member (Bassett) said the city code currently requires payment within 22 calendar days of mailing and that disconnection follows a series of delinquency notices and a final notice; the ordinance would allow staff to place a phone call as the initial disconnection notice and reserve a paper tag only if telephonic notice cannot be completed. Staff also said consumers with hardships can work with the utility for payment arrangements and that the finance director can reverse disconnection actions in hardship cases.
Councilmembers pressed staff on several scenarios, including customers hospitalized or otherwise unable to respond. One councilmember proposed an amendment to require actual spoken contact with a person before disconnect, rather than relying on leaving a voicemail as the final notice; the motion for that amendment did not receive a second and council returned to the original ordinance language. During deliberations staff and council discussed the ordinance text; staff noted a defined term in the addition that reads “confirmed means a telephone call was answered by a person or staff,” and the council interpreted the ordinance to allow voice mail as a sufficient telephonic notice when calls are otherwise unsuccessful.
After discussion the council moved, seconded, and adopted Ordinance 4969 on second reading. The ordinance amends chapter 2.12 (collection of accounts/utilities) and related city-code sections to permit telephonic disconnect notices and codifies the sequence of phone contact followed by a paper tag if telephonic contact is not possible.
Why it matters: the change is intended to reduce staff workload and backlog associated with hand-delivered tags while preserving staff discretion to provide accommodations for customers with documented hardships. However, some councilmembers raised concerns that voicemail may not provide meaningful notice for customers who do not monitor messages or who are hospitalized, and staff acknowledged those programmatic trade-offs while pointing to available administrative remedies.
Next steps: the ordinance takes effect per its terms; utilities staff will implement the new notification sequence and continue to work with customers who report hardship.
