Council reviews broad utility billing and collections overhaul aimed at cutting $844,000 in unpaid balances

City staff presented a comprehensive set of recommended changes to utility billing and collection practices designed to reduce roughly $844,000 in uncollected balances. The recommendations include contracting with a collections agency (fee: 30% of amounts recovered), tightening contract language to hold owners and tenants accountable for prior balances, reducing days of exposure before disconnection from 96 to 68 days, and making disconnect dates visible directly on customer bills.

Staff (Crystal) also proposed revisions to leak‑adjustment rules: adjust eligibility to nonpreventable leaks only, change the frequency to one adjustment every 24 months (from 36 months), raise the minimum claim processing threshold to $20, and increase the maximum adjustment from $1,000 to $3,000. On corrective billing, staff proposed limiting both underbilling and overbilling corrections to a two‑year lookback to streamline practice. Crystal said the city has restructured finance operations and hired a collections specialist and that the administration has already contracted with an outside collection firm and plans a phased implementation with broad customer notification and a transition period.

Council members raised concerns about the sharp reduction in the late‑fee grace period (from 10 days to one day) and suggested considering an intermediate grace period (for example, five days) to avoid sudden hardship for some customers. Crystal said staff are open to a middle ground but that the single most impactful change will be moving the disconnection date up by four weeks; the proposed effective date is October 1 if adopted on the September schedule.