One of the purposes of my report each week is to give information about the City and issues and topics that arise. This week we will focus on some of the services that residents and businesses utilize from the City. In this case, there are services that are charged for and thus a monthly billing is needed to generate the income to operate and maintain these services. In the case of Junction City this would be the services of water, wastewater, storm water, and sanitation. These services are all included in the monthly bill that the City sends each month. I have managed other cities that also included electric and natural gas as a City utility, but that is not the case here.
Often people call it their water bill, but as mentioned above, it is only 1 of the 4 services included. In some neighboring communities, the City may not provide sanitation or trash services, so if you ever compare your City bill with your friends in another community, keep that in mind. In cities that have municipal electric such as Chapman, Wamego, Herington, and Clay Center I would guess the residents call it the electric bill even though it also includes other services.
This week, the Public Works Department along with the Customer Service Department disconnected water meters for those customers for lack of payment the water bill. As you know the water portion of the bill is based on the amount of water one uses and is read monthly. I will cover the other 3 in the upcoming weeks. Okay, I realize this can be controversial that the services are discontinued. In the case of water, it is a commodity that has been used in the past and there is a cost to provide the service.
The Customer Service Department has the City broken into 2 cycles. There are nearly 11,000 accounts so basically split in half for each cycle. For the most part the bills are paid on a timely basis by most customers, and it is only a small amount of the accounts, less than 2 percent, have to be dealt with for collection. The downside of disconnecting a service is that the City Code adopted by the City Commission adds a $50 fee if the account is scheduled to be disconnected.
Last summer the Customer Service Department started a new effort to remind people of their bill being due. The day before “cut-off” door tags are hung at the address. This has greatly reduced the number of services that are disconnected. This past week 191 door tags were hung on Tuesday, however by Wednesday morning only 44 had to be dealt with. This is great in that those who did pay after the door tags were distributed were saved the $50 fee. Secondly, no one likes to see the services disconnected and thirdly, to disconnect the meters pulls away Public Works staff from doing other projects and duties. Before the door tags, the number of disconnects was much higher. When the idea of door tags was first discussed, there were doubters here at the office, but we have found great success for both the customers and for City staff.
“Shut Off” is not a good day for both the customer and the staff. Naturally the customer is not happy this occurred and that they are required to pay the extra fees and are without water. The office staff has to deal with those customers and are often the target of them being upset. Yes, I hear the complaints about the staff, and I know some complain after they even talk to me about their account. Just remember the staff is doing their job and following the polices that have been set. These are all set by ordinances that were approved by the City Commission. City staff would be elated if there were zero disconnects.
A few years ago, Automated Metering Instrumentation (AMI) was installed. In the past each meter was read by City staff monthly. Granted the City had moved to a system where touch pads were used, and the meter readers just had to touch the pad on top of the meter lid. This, however, did take time and took up to 3 days each cycle. With the AMI system, the meters can be read in a matter of minutes from the office. Even though meters are read monthly for billing reasons, they produce data each hour. When staff gets questions about a bill, they can look at the readings to help determine the issue. Likewise, any customer can contact Customer Service and get access to check their own readings. If there is usage every hour, there is a chance that there is a running toilet or perhaps an underground leak.
We often hear some customers say they can’t use that much water. For residential accounts, there is an old “rule of thumb” that an average indoor water use is 50 gallons per person per day. This equates to about 1500 gallons per month. So, a family of 5 would be 7,500 gallons. When Paula and I had the 3 girls at home we would be higher than that number, but they all…