City of Liberty Cracks Down on Utility Bills

LIBERTY, June 21, 2010 - Recently an audience member of i-dineout.com contacted us about an unknown charge on their City of Liberty utility bill. This person is a retired widow in her seventies living on a fixed income and the City of Liberty had added a charge of $160.00 as a required security deposit to her bill with no explanation during this current billing cycle. This person has lived in the same house in Liberty for 39 years and the City has a 39-year credit history for this person.

This person’s situation is not unique. She normally pays her bill just after she receives her monthly social security check, not taking into consideration the billing cycle of her utility bill and when the bill is actually due. When her social security check comes in she pays the bill. This is typical of many.

The City of Liberty has a large elderly population and in fact others may be in the same situation as the audience member who contacted us.

We asked Liberty City Manager Gary Broz about this situation in an attempt to discover the scope of the problem and what the City had recently done to solve it.

City Manager Gary Broz, provided a copy of a City Ordinance No. 964 passed by Council in 2003 requiring that, “Any customer who makes three late payments in a twelve month period shall be required to post a deposit.”

According to Broz, the City is attempting to clean up accounts receivables for utility bills in the City and has a new billing clerk assigned to accomplish this task. This is the reason this issue is coming up at the present time.

Broz stated that there were about 198 utility customers in the City to receives bills with security deposit added on to them in this billing cycle and that there would be more to come.

According to Broz, “Our customer service did not come out well with this and we are compiling a letter to send out before the customer gets their bill.”

I-dineout.com asked City Manager Broz, several years ago when Dennis Odell was on City Council and our Mayor was Bruce Halstead, City Council made the decision to refund electrical deposits to its customers in good standing. It was a considerable sum of money that Council felt was unnecessary to hold on to. Has your feeling and that of the mayor and council on this matter changed?

Broz answered “I think it’s a good thing, don’t hold the money, but keep the accounts current.”

This writer, once several years ago after living in my house for 15 years, was so busy I just forgot to pay my utility bill. The city would not pay a secretary to call me and tell me I had forgotten to pay my bill. However, the city, quite willingly, paid an employee of the utility department to drive to my house in a city vehicle and pull my electric meter, shutting off the electricity to my house. This cost the city a lot of money to do this when the solution to the entire problem was a simple phone call.

i-dineout.com asked Broz, does this policy make any sense and does it still exist? He responded, “Hopefully we can get better with our customer service and get better at what we are doing. We’ve got to… We’re changing our tactics .”

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