6.1. ERMUSR 02-14-2012 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Elk River Municipal U ties UTILITIES COMNIISSION MEETING pONEREO {1 ~~~~~~ P O W E R E D T O S E0.`/E TO: FROM: Elk River Municipal Utilities Commission Theresa Slominski -Finance and Office John Dietz -Chair Manager Dazyl Thompson -Vice Chair Al Nadeau -Trustee MEETING DATE: AGENDA ITEM NUMBER: Februar 14, 2012 6.1 SUBJECT: Staff U dates -Finance and Office Mana er DISCUSSION: We had 1092 credit cazd payment transactions in Januazy, compared to 970 in December. The fee for January should be $2,457. The new interface that will allow customers to obtain their account balance information, view bills, and make and schedule payments online, will be ready to go February l0a'. It was supposed to have been ready in January, however, a programming privacy feature required more time. The statement backers have been updated to reflect this change and our website has the "button" ready to go, but currently states it is coming soon. Staff will be trained this week and it will be introduced to customers with Februazy's billing. As a follow-up to last month's meeting, I wanted to review the process for collections and write- offs. Every month, after the payments for the 15th due date have been posted, a program is run that automatically assesses penalties to all accounts without a payment posted. (Note: some accounts are flagged as penalty exempt -due to special circumstances for one time only or an account that has a special payment arrangement on file, etc. -and so these accounts would not receive a penalty.) Once penalties have been assessed, Reminder Notices aze sent out to everyone that was assessed a penalty. We typically send out between 1,500 and 1,800 Reminder Notices every month. Customers usually receive these notices around the 18~h of the month, and the notice states payment is due by the end of the month to avoid shut-off. The bills for the next cycle are then started to be processed and are sent around the 25a' of [he month. Shut-offs are processed the first week of the month and a "red tag" is hung for those subject to disconnection. Those subject to disconnection would be those customers not having made a payment for two or more months in a row. During the summer, these customers are shut-off and the majority quickly get caught up unless there are extreme circumstances. During the cold