Council - Special Meeting

All right, it's 5 o'clock. Call the special meeting to order. Would you call the role? Gilmore here. Woodley here. Stone here. Roden here. Batty here. Mayor

here. And we have a quorum. Uh scheduled business item number one, discussion, possible action to approve and authorize the mayor to sign a resolution temporarily to suspend the 10-day past due cut off policy for utilities for the month of November 2025. Temporarily waiting past due fees, non-payment fees for the month of November 2025. Um so basically this came about with conversation with Levi about uh staff benefits. Um, is there anything from a city perspective that we could do to kind of ease some of the pain on a lot of our families? I'm not sure what the percentage is in town. Um, some of the things Ken and I discussed were because there's several different things. Can you wave the late fees? Can you wave the disconnect fees? Can you wave disconnects? Well, if you wave the disconnects, you don't have the disconnect fees to wave. And then do you just not charge late fees to wave? So, there's a couple different ways that we could try to tackle it and [clears throat] discuss it.

Do they uh do they need to prove hardship if they're being I think it would just be across the board. I also want to add it's not just the SNAP benefits. We've got a lot of neighbors who are bigger workers who are also not getting paid. Not that any of those would be would be able to utilize this program, but there could be one. Well, has that ex escalated and stuff? people not paying the water bills. Sure. Do you care? Who's who's the expert?

So when you ask has it escalated? Um we send we sent what we call 48 hour calls two days before cuto off. So technically cutoff should have been today. Um but we didn't. We can do it tomorrow depending on the decision. So calls went out on Monday and we sent out 299 calls. Wow. Wow.

Normal is about 250 to 275. So is it higher than normal? A little bit, but not a lot. I wouldn't It kind of just depends. And this time of year, it kind of gets like that anyway because of Christmas and you know, so I can't really say that it's elevated. Um, we have talked to a couple customers that have been concerned and we're always willing to work with them. I mean, most of the time they're still going to get that 10% late fee, which is the day after it's due, we implement a late fee. It's 10% of the current bill, not of the total balance. Um, but as far as a non-payment fee, which is equivalent to what you're calling a disconnect fee, we call it a non-payment fee. If they have an arrangement on the account, which basically extends their due date to like they say they're due on the 5th and due today, they can't pay, but I'm going to pay on the 15th and cut off is before then. We put an arrangement in and they won't be on the cut off list. They won't get that $45 non-pay fee. So penalty would the the late fee would definitely be something to consider. Um the cut off um as long as they work with as long as they communicate with us we put arrangements on the accounts and they won't be subject to cut off.

It's just when there's no communication is when we run into issues. How much was the late pink shift? 10% 10% on that of the of the current bill. So, if we said we waved the late fees for November, that would wave 10% and then if they're willing to talk to you, then you wouldn't do the cut off anyway, right? Who makes that decision? What decision? Whether they're going to put an arrangement in there just like automatic if they call you.

If they call us and say, "I can't pay today." And we say, "When can you pay and how much can you pay?" Um, that the clerks can do that. It doesn't have to go through the billing supervisor. Yeah. It doesn't have to go through any of that. Now, we also have a process that we call failed arrangements, which means they told us they were going to pay on the 15th and didn't. Technically, we should be going out and turning them off, we wouldn't do that in this situation. Um, we we just as long as you tell us when you can pay, we're we're pretty lenient on just need communication. We just need communication. Yeah,

I think it's a good idea this this um it it has been a concern. and we've talked about it for the last probably two weeks, you know, and and in house what we've decided is that we're going to work with them. Um, we stopped cut offs and penalties during COVID and we had a lot of accounts that snowballed. They're not getting a reminder to pay. They're not getting a, you know, the threatened, I should say, to be cut off. So, we had a lot of accounts that just built and built and built. I will tell you my suggestion if you decide to not cut off and to wave non-pay fees and to wave penalties is that we still send out the calls.

We still want to send a reminder that you owe this. Um I'm not sure about the cuto off calls since we won't be doing them, but we quit doing all of that and we had accounts that we ended up getting stuck with. So it was kind of like well nobody's telling me I need to pay so I'm not going to. How long was that period of time? We started It was like a year, wasn't it? Over a year. Yeah. I mean, I could I don't know off hand. I know we started back in 2021 at some point, but I don't remember what. No reminder, no cut off at that point. You're not doing anything that March of 20 or April of 2019. It actually

20 20 that it started. So, so we could look at a proposal of waving the 10% fee, not doing disconnects in November, but still doing our calls as reminders. So, we're just going to do this for one month basically. It just be for November. Yeah. Yeah. Just with Thanksgiving and Christmas kind of approaching just to try to help give some relief out there. I mean, it's even to the point um I've heard where food pantries are already running out faster. It's a it's a pretty crazy time we're living in. So,

any any bit of relief we can provide to somebody within our means.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I would say too if we're going to put out any kind of PSA on this that we re we recommend paying what you can because the problem that we're going to run into is you're not paying this bill but then December's bill is going to come out and now you owe double. And so again, we can do arrangements that let's say, you know, things turn back around in December and they can pay November's bill and we extend December's. And so, you know, even putting $20 on a $58 bill will help. So that's that's kind of where we've been with the discussion we we had with Porsche, the billing supervisor, was if they can pay 20, let's we'll extend the rest and pay it when you can, you know, just to not compound the problem.

Yeah, absolutely. So I just just to be clear, this is for residential customers only, correct? Yeah. Okay. Residential customers. Any other thoughts? Do you all like that? Wave the 10% disconnect. Wave the 10% late fee, no disconnects and uh continue to call to remind people that that they need to be working with us and paying what they can. Yeah, I think that's crucial. Continuing to call them. Yeah. Any other thoughts or but not in a collections way. This is just a reminder. They're going to get a call. It's a reminder you have this.

We can change the verbiage because it's a it's an automated message. Um, I don't even know. Does it say you'll be if you get a late fee? I don't know. I can punitive kind of.

Yeah, I can change the verbiage to just say this is a reminder that to, you know, pay if it has anything about late fee, I can take that off. So, I think there's there's three things that I want to make sure if when you make a motion that wave the 10% penalty, wave the non-payment fee, and don't process cut offs. I don't know if that's is that the right way to say that because the non-pay fee is part of the cut off process and that's what actually charges the fee and then we go out physically and cut off. So, there's three things that we won't be doing.

Cara, is there a way to tell them uh we understand that your your November bill and your December bill will be put together if if we need to if you need to make arrangements to pay this if we can include that in that recording because they're going to have two months worth of bills that together and that's some people can't pay one month, right? Much less two. Yeah, I can I can in that call I can add something that says if you need to make arranges, please call. Yeah. So, we won't expect them to [clears throat] make contact with you though. This is just going to be blanket across. This is like any resident during Yeah. Just across the board. But I think as Cara said with the PSA

and and maybe even in the phone call, very encouraging. Please call us and and make any arrangements you can. And you probably don't want 299 phone calls. Well, and I think that the issue will be December because we're not going to charge in November. We're not going to cut off in November. But when December comes, if we don't meet again about this, that's where Yeah. So, so I think what we can do I'll I'll I can work with the verbiage on the in the November's call, but I think the December's call is where we need to have that call for an arrangement if you're if you're unable to make November and December's payment, you know, due to

How many customers do we have? How many bills go out? About 8,000. We have about 1300 that are commercial. So, okay. 40. Well, 60. I can't add. time and finance, but I can [laughter] That's a very small percentage though for that many water customers. Really? 299 are getting calls this month out of 8,000 accounts. That's one zone. So, we do cut offs twice a month. Okay.

We have zone one and zone two, which is pretty much north side and southside. Um so, um not sure if this was north side. Um, one usually has more than the other. I wouldn't necessarily double it, but so in a in a month probably 500. Okay. Total. Did we get all of the water meters on electronic so you're getting that information immediately?

Not all of them. A big percentage of them. We had some that there were what we call exceptions that somebody one of us has to go out it's in concrete or there was a reason that we couldn't and then we still have commercial. So, I mean, not not doing cut offs two days out of a month, they should be able to get caught up on some other things because that's a full day um two full days if not more. A little bit of a bright side. Yeah. All right. Any further discussion, questions? I'm agreed.

So, the uh the motion will be for a resolution to wave the 10% late fee, wave the non-payment fee, and to not process cut offs. I make a motion motion. Councelor Woodley, second counselor Batty would call. Councelor Woodley, yes. Batty, yes. Gilmore, yes. Stone, yes. Rhoden, yes. Mayor, yes. And the motion carries. We are ajourned. Thank you,