City looks at $25 fee for scheduled disconnects who have paid bill

The Kimball Board of Public Works suggested to charge a $25 fee for residents scheduled for utility disconnection but who pay before their utilities are disconnected at its Sept. 8 meeting.

The board is scheduled to vote on the matter at its next meeting. The board originally took the matter up at its Aug. 25 meeting, but decided to table the matter until last week.

At last week’s meeting, City Administrator Daniel Ortiz said there were 42 residents on the June shut-off list, while there were 34 in July and 16 in August. Through Sept. 8, there were six on the September shut-off list. There were also 352 payment arrangements made from June 1 through Sept. 3.

“Unless they have been shut off I don’t think they should be (charged a reconnect fee),” said board member Dawn Moeser. “I mean if they don’t have the money to begin with, why would we do that?”

“Well, the funny part is, you say they may not have the money but the minute someone is at their back door disconnecting them they come up with the money,” Ortiz answered.

The board recommended a $25 late fee for residents scheduled for disconnect but who have not yet been disconnected.

At the Aug. 25 meeting when the issue was tabled, the board heard a concern from Ortiz that even with two notices, residents or business owners who are on the disconnect list wait to see when city personnel are in the disconnection process then rush to the city office to pay their utility bill and avoid a reconnection fee. The fee is $50 plus tax Monday through Friday or $100 plus tax on weekends and holidays.

“This is a policy we want to bring to you for clarification, we have a disconnect fee which is roughly about $55,” Ortiz said at the previous meeting. “It has come to Mike on a couple of occasions where he has some people who, um, see us driving around or trying to disconnect people who are on the shut-off list for non-payment and they quickly run down to the city office to make a payment before they can disconnect it.”

Ortiz said the question before the board was whether to charge the citizens on the disconnect list with a disconnect fee before they are to be disconnected.

“The question is does them being on the disconnect list make them subject to the disconnect fee or do we need to consider that as a late fee or a separate charge in that instance?” Ortiz questioned. “This may be an overgeneralization, but they are repeat customers. They know the system and they play the system. They will run in here and if they don’t pay in full they will sign another payment agreement and then it is just a repetitive cycle, month after month.”

“Let’s keep it simple,” board member Greg Robinson said. “I would really like some time to think about that.”

The board tabled the item until Sept. 8, when they suggested a $25 for those scheduled for disconnection but who pay before their utilities have been disconnected.

The board also reviewed a previous resolution to fund Keep Kimball Beautiful. When it was originally passed, Resolution 2013-05 allocated $2 of the landfill rates to KKB. Last week the board replaced that with Resolution 2015-03, which keeps the rates the same for residents but erases the allocation language. The board will now yearly choose how much any entity will receive. KKB will receive $1 of that fee this fiscal year and will be expected to petition the BPW for funding allocations annually in June.

“We needed to go back and change the language to make sure that is not spelled out in there,” Ortiz said.

Ortiz said that while the BPW passed the resolution to allocate the money for KKB in September 2012, the board did not actually raise the rates at that time.

“The rates at the time were set at $12 and from January 2013 through April 2014, you were actually shorting yourself $2 from your landfill funds. It wasn’t until we raised the rates to $15, anticipating that you would be collecting an additional $3 of operations out at the landfill, and that turned out not to be the case. You were actually only giving yourself $1 from the $3 increase,” Ortiz stated. “So that explains some of the shortfalls and financial difficulties we have been having at the landfill to some extent.”

The board was apprised of some obstacles that Paul Quicke faces while reading meters, struggles that make the same task nearly impossible for newly hired meter readers.

Anyone attempting to read meters in Kimball must face dogs, climb over debris, duck under foliage, enter yards, and in some cases, homes, just to read electric and water meters.

Poor placement of water meter touch pads, like inside the back door, painted and disguised touch pads as well as electric meters hidden in landscaping or weeds make the task even more difficult.

“There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to how things were done initially. We are talking about meter pits that were put in as far back as the ‘20s and ‘30s. Some were put in the alleys, some in people’s homes,” Ortiz said. “When we can’t read the meter, we estimate if no one is home for us to get in or for them to secure the dogs. We are going to have to figure something out. We do have an ordinance that specifies that our meters need to be accessible. We can look at enforcing that.”

Board members brainstormed ways to make each meter and touch pad easier to see, with brightly painted posts, protected by conduit or mapping. They added that additional tools for reading the meters is necessary, as currently they have only one.

“The other options we are exploring is one, we have a quote for what it would cost to get another one of those (reading) units. We talked about budgeting for that this coming fiscal year. $8,500 was what it is,” Ortiz said. “You look at that (reading) unit, it is old, it was initially a demo, it is showing its age, it has electrical tape holding one part.”

Buying another unit or two would make meter reading a quicker process by allowing for additional readers, and provide a back up unit in case one fails. This would also allow for a one month billing cycle, according to Ortiz, with all meters read at one time and all bills due at the same time as well.

“It is going to be complicated with how we handle the billing up front, because now you are going to have a mass of people coming in roughly at the same time paying their bill, so we need to make sure we are able to handle that,” Ortiz said.

Jean Klassen, city employee, said she would like to see the city attempt to time the billing cycle to hit the pay periods for the majority of the citizens. This would allow them to plan payments and to remedy the need for excessive payment arrangements.

“I would like to see you all to sit down and come up with a plan,” Robinson said. “Try to accommodate everybody, I know you’re not going to, but try to do the best you can.”

“There is no easy solution to try to get this done,” Ortiz said. “Timeline to try to integrate something like this is roughly 90 to 120 days once we figure out, and get all the kinks worked out.”

Also before the board was a consideration to remedy the abundance of timber at the landfill, due to the number of trees that have recently been cut down.

Ortiz sought direction from the board with several options, including selling the firewood, adding it to the construction and demolition pit or burning it at the landfill. Because the timber is so large, often the size of full tree trunks, it cannot safely be burned. Since insurance is a concern, cutting the larger pieces of wood would fall to the landfill crew.

“I would like to see it be used for firewood if somebody wants to use it, but at the same time if we were loading their trailer or waiting for them if they are in there buzzing with a chain saw, there is a lot of liability there,” Robinson said.

The board decided to charge patrons a construction and demolition charge for those who will not cut down large branches, limbs and even tree trunks. They may offer firewood to patrons as well.