by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
When the City authorized the stormwater, solid waste and franchise fees in September of 2007 and began billing in May of 2008, the franchise fee was worked into the bills of JEA customers. The other two were sent out as separate bills.
It’s the collection of the other two fees that has created problems.
According to Joey Duncan, director of the City’s Public Works Department, nearly $50 million was collected the first 18 months the stormwater and solid waste fees were enacted. However, that amount represents about 65 percent of what was billed and that figure is 20 percent below what the City projected and has budgeted for 2009-10.
Now the City is considering a partial payment plan. However, who will oversee the collection and the logistics involved is still up in the air.
“We heard some concerns during the Public Works budget hearing from the City Council members about us not accepting what people were trying to pay,” said Marcy Cook, spokesperson for the Public Works Department. “Under our model, it’s all or nothing.”
Cook says the City has received approximately $150,000 in partial payments from residents and commercial landowners. However, because that amount doesn’t represent payments-in-full, the City sent them back. Since then, $121,000 has been collected from those same customers.
According to Cook, there is $16 million in outstanding stormwater fees and another $6.8 in solid waste fees. The City could resort to using a collection agency or placing liens on property owners. However, both of those collection methods could prove more costly than the fees themselves.
The solid waste fees are assessed as follows: $5 a month to single family homes and a percentage of the total impervious area of a commercial piece of property. The solid waste fees apply only to single family homes and they are $4 a month from January-September and $5 a month from October to the end of December. There are a number of exempted properties and property owners. They include nonprofits, churches and other organizations. Cook said the City employs the IRS Publication 78 standard to determine who is exempt and who isn’t.
Duncan, in a letter to Council members, explained the collection process is still evolving.
“Certainly, there are additional enhancements that we could provide in the future, such as online payments, payments by credit card, and implementing a partial payment plan,” said Duncan. “These elements are logical next steps in the evolution of the City’s billing process, should it remain as currently modeled.
“However, in today’s climate, I also understand the contradictory appearance of returning payments, even though other entities in the City operate under a ‘pay in full’ model and the administrative effort required to execute a partial payment plan would be greater than our current billing model. Nevertheless, we are devising a method to accept payments from customers that are less than the total amount owed.”
Cook said her department has gotten many phone calls and letters from customers explaining their failure to pay. She said the reasons have been a combination of people putting them aside, losing them, not understanding them and others still who simply refuse to acknowledge the bills. Cook did say that customers seem to respond to late notices.
Cook also acknowledged that accepting partial payments may present a different problem. If a property owner only pays $2 of the monthly $4 solid waste fee, the remaining $2 doesn’t go away.
“Collecting something is better than nothing,” she said. “We definitely want the fees to be sustainable. They pay for services directly and do not go into the general fund.”
Duncan and Cook both said accepting partial payments will create the need to handle those payments separately. Exactly how that’s done and who will handle those payments hasn’t been determined.
“We have never taken the issue of partial payments lightly, and I’d like to stress that our current path forward is an imperfect, temporary solution,” said Duncan. “We remain committed to our work to develop the most appropriate and logical long-term solution that will provide both adequate collections to fund our services and stability and predictability of billing for our customers.”
356-2466