Council debates whether to outsource fire-recovery billing after chief presents a 22% vendor fee

Tremonton's fire chief presented a proposal to use a third-party billing vendor for fire and structure-recovery collection; the vendor would bill insurance and residents and take a percentage. The chief described a typical structure: for a private-structure response the vendor would pursue the insurance-related portion (the draft contract used a $500 cap for residences and $5,000 for commercial property) and then handle delinquencies, collections and necessary follow-up.

"They take a percentage of that, which is 22%," the chief said of the vendor fee. Council members raised cost concerns and noted the city previously performed similar billing in-house and had recovered significantly more revenue historically. One council member urged trying an in-house approach first and asked staff to determine whether the city's incident-reporting system (ImageTrend) could be configured to export billable incidents to the finance office for internal billing. Staff were directed to work on a data-transfer process, assess the ability to resume in-house billing (including going back as far as July 1 if feasible), and return with a recommendation and cost-benefit analysis.

The council did not approve a contract at this meeting; instead it directed staff to test systems integration and to bring a recommendation to a future meeting. Chief emphasized that the proposed third-party provider could also pursue county and other jurisdictional billing and would reduce administrative burden, but council members cautioned about losing 22% of potential revenue without first trying an in-house approach.