1989-01-09 Public Hearing and Regular Meeting

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~ ~ If Council wishes that we return to our customers/citizens their deposits after they have shown a timely payment history, I propose that deposits be returned to customers after they have shown 12 continuous months of prompt payment. The accounts will be analyzed on an annual basis based on the anniversary date of the deposit. We will have to initially analyze the accounts manually, however, I believe a slight modification to our software would allow us to have the analytical step performed automatically by the computer. I do not propose we increase the period beyond 12 months because of the extra computer disk space that would be required to store the information on all 9,000+ accounts. If we increased the history from 12 to 24 months, it would slow an already slow system down even mare. At the close of the .workshop, I told Council that I would be returning at the next Council meeting to present a plan to modify our payment dates and to reduce our billing cycles from 3 cycles to 2 cycles. I will present each item separately for discussion purposes. Decrease in Number of Davs for Customers to Pav Currently, the City of La Porte requires payment 20 days after the customer is billed. If payment is not received during the 20 days, a 10 percent penalty is added to the bill. If payment has not been received by 30 days after the billing, the utility service is disconnected. The length of time required before a disposition of the bill (either payment or disconnection) is obtained has caused the Revenue Collection Division problems for several years. I have also received complaints from customers regarding the time lag between reading their meter and their receipt of their bill. The problems identified are listed below. The Revenue Collection Division is preparing bills for a cycle on the same day that cycles delinquent accounts are being worked (i.e. cut-off day). This sometimes causes a customer to be billed for an amount they have paid at the last minute but because their payment was so late, it was not posted to their account until after the bills were calculated and printed. When this happens, it causes a customer (sometimes irate) to call the Revenue Collection Customer Service Clerk, who then has to manually look up the account to see what happened. Hy having the 30 day time frame, we are limited on the leeway we have to bill customers. Because there is an average of 30.4 days in a month, if the cut-off date falls on a weekend or holiday, it is pushed to the following working day. When this happens, it moves our billing date past the normal 30 day time frame. Even page 2