Utility bill deadbeats reined in

 

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

 

Abandoning the carrot for the stick, a new push by the city to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid utility bills is producing startling results.

 

In the solid waste category, $492,661 in unpaid trash collection bills have been reduced to just over $96,000, an 80 percent drop. Storm water bill collection has seen similar success, falling from $188,449 for non-government delinquency to $83,000, a 56 percent decline.

 

Jay Gewin, Key West Utility Manager, said the successful collection efforts were the result of changing how the utility bills were sent out. Instead of sending a monthly utility bill to property owners, the annual bill, plus the amount of delinquency, was sent with the annual property tax bill. Although the utility charges were outlined in a separate line item, the total amount was due April 1 along with property taxes.

 

“If you don’t pay your property tax bill, it could result in your property tax certificate being sold, which could eventually result in the loss of your property,” Gewin said about the new incentive to pay.

 

Previously, a property owner who did not pay his or her utility bills had little to worry about. Ignoring a bill for trash collection, for example, never resulted in the property owner being cut off from that municipal service.

 

“The penalties for not paying were not severe,” Gewin said. “You couldn’t stop trash collection because it was a health and safety concern. The only resource we had was to put a lien on the property, which only gets you paid back when the property is sold.”

 

The new payment demand came after the successful roll-out of a similar payment change for sewer bills last year. Instead of sending out separate bills for sewer use, those charges were added to a property owner’s water bill, administered by the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority. If the water bill went unpaid, officials could cut off the water supply to a specific property.

 

“Of the $664,165 of prior [sewer] delinquencies, the City has reduced that sum to $405,669.  We have therefore collected $258,495.63.  This is about 39% of the original sum,” Gewin said in an email to Konk Life.

 

Key West was one of the last towns in the area to change the way it billed for utility use, adding teeth to the bills. Gewin said Monroe County and several cities in the Florida Keys are already adding utility charges to annual property tax bills.

 

“We’re all ecstatic it’s trending in the right direction,” Gewin said about the drop in payment delinquencies. “It’s a benefit to all our rate payers. It can mitigate future rate increases if we can lower delinquencies.”

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