Six months in, committee hears mostly positive results from citywide residential trash billing rollout

Six months after the city began billing residential trash service under a single municipal contract, finance staff told the Budget Finance Committee that collections are progressing, customer-service calls have been low and the program is functioning as intended.

Staff presented a month-by-month snapshot showing billed accounts, payments received and collection percentages, and said some mailbox and mail-delivery issues in June produced a delayed payment pattern; because the billing system posts payments against the month the bill was generated, some later payments appeared in earlier months on staff reports. Staff noted the city collects a $2 administrative fee per bill and that the municipal remittance to the contractor (Republic Services) equals the amounts actually collected for service: "we have no actual, like, dollar obligation to Republic," a finance presenter said.

Committee discussion covered online account setup, ACH enrollment and citizen self-service through the city's Munis platform. Staff said the city continues to use an existing citizen self-service interface because alternative vendor interfaces that are more user-friendly would not support the free ACH pull option the city currently offers; staff said nearly 12,000 accounts use ACH. Committee members asked staff to explore user experience improvements while preserving the no-fee ACH option.

Staff reported that few residents have sought to opt out of the municipal program; the small number of exceptions involve properties that are unoccupied or otherwise ineligible. The committee asked staff to provide follow-up data to show month-to-month true-up patterns and to continue monitoring customer feedback.