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Council reports: brick-street maintenance, Washington advocacy and utility payment fixes discussed
Summary
During the 'report of city officials' segment councilmembers and staff discussed recent Washington, D.C., advocacy that could reduce remediation well costs, ongoing brick-street maintenance priorities and a finance-department update on waterbill.hutchgov.com including a new text-to-pay option and browser workarounds for a checkout bug.
Councilmembers used the city-officials report to share recent outreach and operational matters, including a Washington, D.C., advocacy trip, questions about brick-street maintenance and an update on the city’s online utility payment portal.
Councilmember Fast summarized meetings in Washington, saying the delegation met with U.S. senators and staffers about remediation-well funding and other priorities. Fast said the contacts could be productive and estimated the effort could save the city about $600,000 a year in remediation-well costs. Councilmember Villegas later described an annualized savings figure of $5,600,000; both figures were presented by council members as estimates from federal discussions and should be confirmed in subsequent budget work.
The council held a longer discussion about brick streets and pavement preservation. Council members and staff noted the current budget line for brick-street work is $25,000 per year, described that large repairs generally require removing bricks, stabilizing the base (often with concrete), and reinstalling brick, and discussed alternatives such as paving over brick where appropriate and creating special-benefit districts to preserve bricks in neighborhoods that request them. City staff said they plan a holistic assessment to prioritize blocks and will return with a plan and funding options.
Angela Richard, the city’s finance director, briefed council on technical problems with waterbill.hutchgov.com after the city switched vendors in July 2024. Richard said some users were unable to view bills or use the “add to cart” feature (useful for landlords paying multiple accounts); those issues are intermittent and appear to be browser-dependent. The short-term workaround is to use the checkout option and to try Chrome or Safari; a long-term fix is in development and the vendor will add website instructions. Richard also said the site has a new text-to-pay feature that can send a payment link via text the day before a bill is due. Customers who continue to have problems should call billing@hutchgov.com and provide screenshots to expedite troubleshooting.
Councilmembers thanked staff for the updates and asked that staff return with more detailed plans on brick-street funding and a confirmed estimate of any federal remediation savings.
