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- Mona City makes firm decisions on delinquent utility accounts; auditor happy
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By Myrna Trauntvein
Times-News Correspondent
Mona's independent auditor was happy that the city council had made some firm decisions to deal with the problem of 26 percent of utility users being in arrears on utility payments.
"Our tentative plan is to hire somebody from outside the city to perform shut-offs," said Jonathan Jones, council member
In addition to the city hiring an independent entity to actually perform the shut-off of utilities in the city, they will impose a restoration fee and will require a deposit to be held by the city, he said.
"We have a 30-day grace period and we have talked about shortening that time to 15 days," Jones said.
The city will also send out a letter one week before the shut-off is to occur.
One thing the city needed to be aware of, said Ogden, was that the 75 percent of residents who were paying their bills on time were subsidizing those who aren't.
"As of June 30, 2014, the city had 558 total utility customers, of those, 143 (26 percent) had a past due balance," said Greg Ogden, CPA, Springville."Fifty-seven (10 percent) of the customers had a balance which was more than three months due."
He said that he had been harping on this issue for several years now and recommended that the city no longer put off making changes that would reduce the rate of non-payers.
"The trend for customers with past due balances is that the percentage is increasing year by year," said Ogden.
The percentage of utility accounts receivable balances which are over 90 days past due has increased from 15 percent in 2012 to 17 percent in 2013 and has now climbed to 24 percent in 2014.
"The city needs to start enforcing its utility shut-off policy," said Ogden. "A stricter policy will lead to better compliance and result in fewer write-offs of uncollectible accounts."
Ogden presented the city with a printout of the aging report of another city. The customer's names, of course, were removed as was the name of the city being used for comparison.
Ogden said that the printout was from a city of approximately the same size with the approximate same number of accounts.
"You will notice that they have many fewer accounts in arrears because they have an aggressive shut-off policy and they enforce it," he said. "Allowing residents to get behind in their payments is not fair to the rest of the residents who pay their bills on time."
Mona, which only has water, sewer and natural gas utilities (electricity is provided by Rocky Mountain Power) offers a program that averages periods of high and low usage and allows the user to pay uniform monthly payments all year long.
Those who are in arrears on Mona utility payments may also lose the privilege of paying equal monthly payments.
Ogden said that he did not want to keep discussing the need to make changes if the city council was serious about making those changes.
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