WATERLOO: Stiffer penalties weighed for late payments
The City Ordinance Committee met last week at City Hall to hammer out a proposed ordinance change that would make it much more expensive for customers to blow off their utility bills without at least contacting the city to arrange a payment schedule.
The committee also touched briefly on new guidelines for planting and maintaining trees and restraining vicious dogs.City Finance Director Shawn Kennedy said she contacts a number of Illinois municipalities and "just about everybody is 'meaner' than we are. We are the only town I've been able to find that lets residents get two months behind on their bills before we disconnect services."
Kennedy said the city has to disconnect 20-40 services each month. Each reconnection costs the customer a $30 fee plus the balance due with a 10 percent penalty. After-hours reconnections cost $75, which Kennedy said does not cover the city's actual cost.
"I'm all for cutting off earlier than we are doing. People need to make their utility bill a priority," Alderman Steve Notheisen said.
Mayor Tom Smith, who attended the meeting, said his only reservation about cracking down on delinquent utility customers is "it penalizes the kids for their parents' problem."
Smith said the problem is mostly with renters and overall "less than one percent of our 4,000 utility customers."
The committee unanimously voted to propose to the council a new ordinance that would shorten utility customers' time before their services are disconnected, increase the reconnection fee to $35, increase the after-hours reconnection fee to $125 and enable the city to require cash or money order payment for delinquent fees.
It has not been determined when the full council would vote on the proposed ordinance.
The committee will at some point take up a possible ordinance regarding vicious dogs. The matter came to light when a resident asked the council to outlaw invisible, electric fences and ban certain breeds of dogs considered vicious by the Centers for Disease Control.
"(Police Chief) Jim and (Alderman) Rita (Trantham) are going to come back to the committee with some research. We don't know what else we can do about dogs right now," Committee Chairman Vicki Koerber said.
The proposed tree ordinance would designate a list of desirable trees, prescribe spacing for trees, create a "city tree board," create guidelines for public tree trimming and more.
The ordinance would bring the city into compliance with standards of Tree City USA, a national association that rewards cities that maintain useful and attractive treescapes.
The full committee did not discuss the tree ordinance last week.
