5.5. ERMUSR 03-09-2010 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Elk River Municipal Utilities 13069 Orono Parkway • P.O. Box 430 Elk River, MN 55330-0430 March 3, 2010 To: Elk River Municipal Utilities commission John Dietz Jerry Gumphrey Daryl Thompson From: Theresa Slominski Subject: Automatic Bill Payment for Budget Plan Customers Policy Phone: 763.441.2020 Fax: 763.441.8099 At a recent staff meeting, there was some discussion on the budget plan and the challenges of managing of that plan. The challenge comes from the individuals who sign up and then don't follow through on their budget payments, or submit different amounts rather than the agreed budget amount. It has been a practice to try and cross-sell the automatic bill payment (ABP) plan because then we are drafting the agreed upon amount each month and it keeps the budget plans current. We inquired of the attorney if we could require the budget plan customers to be on ABP and it was determined that we could since the budget plan is an optional plan. To implement this we need a policy stating the requirement for budget customers to be ABP customers, and have to modify our application forms to meet this requirement. Our attorney, Peter Beck, has reviewed the policy and related applications (attached) to meet this need. To address some cons of the program are the following. One concern may be that this would eliminate the potential applicants that do not have a bank account and are a cash basis customer. Currently, we have one individual on the plan that pays in cash, but it is not known if that is the preference or the necessity. This is not believed to be a large demographic of the potential budget customers and so it not a legitimate concern. Another concern may be that customers may not sign up for that plan if they are required to participate in the ABP because of a variety of personal reasons. Given the extra work that is required to manage the budget plan if the customer is not willing to commit to having the appropriate timely payment made, it would be preferred that those customers don't sign up for the plan anyway and so it not a legitimate concern. Staff recommends its adoption.