Roger Kelso
Columbus City Utilities has postponed approval of formal policies on payment extensions and payment plans, disconnects, and bad debt pending some minor adjustments.
The city’s Utility Service Board considered these three policies at a Feb. 16 meeting but decided to table each of them. Columbus City Utilities Executive Director Roger Kelso hopes to present the final versions at the board’s March 16 meeting.
The board’s requested edits include having a model for what the agreement will look like for payment extensions, as well as removing redundancies and changing some of the language in policies to be more specific, said Kelso. They requested that instead of the payment plan policy stating that a plan could be extended six to 12 months, the document should just say 12 months.
“In the overall content, there wasn’t really any huge change,” he said.
Kelso said in a previous interview that the board is seeking to codify some of its practices, as they have not been well-documented in the past. This includes disconnects, which have been on hold.
An early draft of the disconnect policy, prior to the board’s February meeting, stated, “After 45 days from billing date, a customer is subject to disconnect for any unpaid past due balance totaling a minimum of $105.00. Prior to disconnect, Columbus City Utilities (CCU) will have attempted to contact the customer a minimum of three times to obtain a payment, subject to having current contact information on file.”
Kelso indicated there will be no substantial changes to this draft, which also provided a timeline for when customers are required to file payment plans or extensions, or a notice from a licensed physician or public health official, in order to avoid being disconnected.
In regards to the bad debt policy, Kelso said that the department is working to ensure its policies are up to date with current statutes and codify its practices. The document pertains to accounts that are not paid off and have been declared uncollectable.
“Maybe it’s a particular type of bankruptcy, maybe it’s a particular type of estate settlement, things like that, cases where you just know you’re not going to be paid,” he said. “So that’s really what, when we say bad debt, that’s we’re referring to. And most of them are relatively small accounts.”
