Iola City Council members agreed Monday to hold off on decisions regarding electric and water rate increases, and whether city policies regarding past-due bills should be changed.
The consensus to wait on both came because more information was needed in one case (how adapting a “Cold Weather Rule” and potential payment installment plans for past-due bills would affect the budget) and more council members were needed on the other (utility rates.)
The Council heard from Angela Murphy of Allen County Connectors, a group of local volunteers who assist local citizens in need find resources in order to make ends meet.
The Connectors asked the Council to ratify a Cold Weather Rule policy that prohibits the city in writing from disconnecting utilities because of past-due bills if the temperature is expected to dip below 34 degrees within the next 24 hours.
Iola does that unofficially, City Clerk Roxanne Hutton noted, but residents are warned their utilities would be disconnected as soon as the temperature warms.
The forecast is reviewed every 24 hours after that, Hutton said.
“It is our understanding utilities are primarily shut off on Tuesdays,” Murphy said. “Each Tuesday for the past four months, the wind chill has been below freezing … yet utilities were shut off in each of these months,” Murphy said.
Councilman Aaron Franklin said he was not opposed to instituting a policy to prevent cold-weather shutoffs, “but I am a little reluctant on a payment installation plan.”
The city already is owed more than $500,000 in bad debt from customers who haven’t paid their bills. Would such a policy balloon the bad debt figure even more? Franklin also voiced concerns that customers struggling to pay their bills now would struggle even more as past-due installment payments were tacked on to their current bills.
Councilwoman Nancy Ford suggested Iola reach out to neighboring communities to learn their policies regarding past-due utility bills, and shut-off policies.
Councilman Jon Wells also wanted to know if the city’s utility billing system was capable of handling installment plan payments. “We also don’t know how it taxes our staff,” he said.
City Administrator Carl Slaugh noted Iola likely allows customers much longer to pay their bills on a regular basis. Customers have up to 28 days to pay their bills without penalty, and up to 40 days or longer before those utilities are disconnected.
“From a business standpoint, some of the efforts we’ve made to give customers a break have worked against us,” Slaugh said.
Other options to consider, Slaugh said, was increasing utility deposits for new customers. As is, the city charges $10 per utility.
Then, the city could use a portion of the deposit, if necessary, to recoup past-due bills.
“There are several different ways we can do this,” Councilwoman Beverly Franklin said.
