VILLAGE MAY OUTSOURCE WATER BILLING

SAUK VILLAGE WATER DEPT.

By Joseph Wiszowaty
SAUK VILLAGE |  Mayor David Hanks revealed that the severely cash strapped village is owed some $100,000 in delinquent water bills and he wants those who owe to pay up.

“Under the previous administration they stopped turning off water on renters” whose bills ran delinquent Hanks said but added that that practice has now come to a halt.

“I am getting regular complaints from landlords who are stuck with huge bills from their tenants” Hanks said.  The Village’s ordinances hold the home’s owner, not the tenant’s responsible for the water bill, however, the Village does not and currently with its software cannot generate two bills for the same account.  “I don’t blame them (the landlords).  If we were in their shoes how would we feel?", Hanks said.

While Hanks empathized with the plight of the landlords, he also wants to toughen up on placing liens on the home’s owner for delinquent and unpaid bills.  There are currently 190 homes where the village cannot turn off the water because the properties lack a “B-Box” or “Buffalo Box”.  

The Village heard a second presentation from Rita Miotti at Tuesday night’s Village Board Committee-of-the-whole meeting on outsourcing the water billing.

Miotti is recommending going to a monthly billing cycle to make the bills easier to budget for the consumer.  Miotti said that her company, Municipal Solutions, will do the billing for the village’s water, sewer and garbage service and will charge a nominal $1.25 fee on each bill for the service and $0.75 per second notice.  The figures are tenatative..  

The Village’s operations of providing the data into the village’s system will be unchanged.  The only change will be that the person responsible for running the water bills will no longer be doing that job function.  The administration’s hope is to “free up” the employee’s time to work on other tasks.  Trustee Rosie Williams said that while this may “free up” the time the employee spends on running the water bills, they will now be spending more time at the window servicing twice the number of customers who usually pay their bills in person.

Currently the Village runs on two cycles where 1,000 residents are billed one month and about 1,100 are billed the next month.  Miotti proposes billing the entire village’s 2100 water users each month.  This will also increase the work for the meter readers it was pointed out as well.  

The Village employees’ union filed three grievances to which Hanks added all three have had final resolutions and the Village will not hear them.  “The Village has a right to look into outside contractors and we denied their (the village employee's) grievances" Hanks said.

Willams wanted a “cost benefit analysis” provided by Mohan Rao, the village’s finance director.  Hanks had thought that he would have that available for the meeting Tuesday night, however, none was provided.

Village Trustee Derrick Burgess reminded the board that in order to make all these changes, ordinances would have to be changed including the village’s “minimum bill” which is established for a bi-monthly billing cycle not a monthly one.   Burgess also asked for an analysis on how much the minimum monthly charge would be if the Village switches to a monthly cycle in addition to sewer and garbage collection.