6.1. ERMUSR 02-15-2011 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Elk River 1 Municipal Utilities 13069 Orono Parkway • P.O. Box 430 Elk River, MN 55330-0430 UTILITIES COMMISSION MEETING Phone: 763.441.2020 Fax: 763.441.8099 TO: FROM: Elk River Municipal Utilities Commission Theresa Slominski -Finance Director/Office John Dietz, Chair Manager Daryl Thompson, Trustee MEETING DATE: AGENDA ITEM NUMBER: Februa 15, 2011 6.1 SUBJECT: Staff U dates -Finance Director/Office Mana er DISCUSSION: We had 624 credit card payment transactions in January. This is a new record high in transaction volume, and is double what our highest volume was with the customer fee in place. This indicates customers are pleased with this transition. We did have one customer write a message on the payment stub asking the question of why they should have to subsidize this service for others to use. There was an article in our winter newsletter to help address this concern that others may have as well. The article identified the costs saved with reduced processing time and eliminating NSFs, and pointed out that it's a lower processing fee that ERMU pays. This is just a reminder that the auditors will be here for fieldwork the week of February 28`h - March 4`h. Final audited financial statements are planned to be presented at the April commission meeting. We are still evaluating the after-hours phone service to determine how we move forward after March 31 S` when GRE no longer provides this service to us. We visited a call center company in Woodbury, Opus21, on February ls`. We had planned on visiting a call center in Austin, CRC, on January 31 s` but had to reschedule to February 10`" due to weather. A couple of things that we are gaining with this change is the ability to expand our service center hours with a live person rather than no service after 4:30 (unless it was an outage), and having a call center at a different location which is less likely to be impacted by the same weather related outages/emergencies that we are. I will provide a verbal update to the commission about our visits and our decision at the meeting on Tuesday. I have included some information on the two companies in this packet.