Sanitation district switches to liens instead of cut-offs

Sanitation district switches to liens instead of cut-offs

July 19, 2001

By Gail Binkly
Journal Managing Editor

After months of controversy and criticism, the Cortez Sanitation District board voted 4-1 Tuesday night to try using liens rather than sewer cut-offs to deal with delinquent accounts.

"It’s less heartache all around," said board member Bob Diederich, who had argued for the change. "I think it’s a lot cleaner."

The board has taken considerable flak in recent months for its policy of cutting sewer service to customers with long-overdue bills. In March, a Cortez woman’s service was cut off after she had sent a partial payment to the district and explained in a note that her husband had had a stroke and required brain surgery, and that she’d fallen behind in her payments.

She sold her wedding rings to pay the $500 required for reconnection, and the board denied her a refund of the fee, saying she hadn’t asked for a hearing and had been delinquent before.

The incident drew statewide attention after a Denver Post columnist wrote about the situation. The case also was partially responsible for prompting an ongoing recall effort against three of the five board members: Jim Bridgewater, Sam Jarvis and board President Stan Pierce.

The board had wrestled ever since with the problem of how to handle delinquent customers. One option — cutting off their water service when their sewer bills were unpaid — was judged to be illegal because the sanitation district, which provides sewer service, and the city of Cortez, which provides water, are separate entities.

The district was left with the alternative, used by many other districts, of putting a lien on the property.

Tuesday night, district manager Bill Smith explained that, under such a system, overdue sanitation bills would be certified and given to the county treasurer every October for inclusion in the January property-tax notices. If the taxes aren’t paid, he said, the property is sold and the money owed to the district is then paid from the proceeds.

It would thus take 11-24 months to collect overdue fees, he said. During that time, charges would continue to accumulate. He recommended the board add 10 percent to the delinquent amount to cover interest.

But Smith expressed concern that moving to such a system would mean more customers not paying their bills.

"The first year you’ll probably certify 15 to 20 (overdue bills) to the treasurer," he said. "The second year it will be 200."

Pierce argued against making the change. "I just have a hard time waiting all the time for that money and seeing those delinquent accounts continue to get service," he said.

Bridgewater said the new policy would mean that delinquent residential customers would pay closer to $65, with fees and surcharges, for three months of service rather than the standard $42. "The people who can least afford it will end up paying $65," he said.

"That’s better than $500," argued board member G.W. McCutcheon, who favored the change.

The members agreed that the problem is not so much that the district disconnects people’s sewer service, but that the charge of reconnecting it is so high. To shut off service, the district must send out a backhoe, dig up the pipe, cut it and plug it.

The process is then reversed if the customer pays the overdue amount and reconnection fee, which is $500 for the first offense and $4,000 for the second disconnection in five years.

Other utilities also cut off people’s service, but the fee to be reconnected is much smaller — $25 in the case of the city’s water service — because shutting off service just involves flipping a switch, Smith said.

At the board’s request, Smith had tried to contact four customers currently on the sanitation district’s disconnect list to see why their bills were unpaid. In two cases, he found, renters were arguing with owners over who was responsible for the bill. In a third case, no one could be reached. In the other, an estranged couple was fighting over the bills.

Few persons avail themselves of the chance to seek a hearing to plead a hardship caes, he said, adding that he had had only one request for a hearing in the past three years.

He said the sanitation district had used liens in the past, but found that the number of delinquent accounts was high. "There was one year when you certified almost $9,000 in unpaid bills to the county," he said.

But McCutcheon said liens would work as well as disconnections. "Eventually we’re going to get our money, plus interest," he said.

The board then voted 4-1, with Pierce dissenting, to send liens to the treasurer in October with a 10 percent surcharge, in lieu of cutting off customers. However, the board reserved the right to do cut-offs in special circumstances "as deemed necessary."

On Wednesday, Maxine Carton, Cortez coordinator for the Southwest Center for Independence, praised the change in policy. Carton had appeared before the board on behalf of two delinquent customers who had disabled persons in their families.

"I’m glad they’re doing that, but it sure took them a long time," she said of the decision.

She added that there is a local fund to help low-income persons who are falling behind in their sewer payments. For more information, contact her at 565-7169.

In other business Tuesday, the board:

Voted to accept a bid of $525,525 from Southwest Contracting, Inc., of Cortez to do a sewer-line replacement project at Prairie Mesa Estates, a low-income housing project on Second Street in Cortez. The bid was the second-highest of three bids. The lowest bidder, Ray Ward Trucking of Dolores, did not provide sufficient information, the board said.
Agreed to charge developers $3 per foot in upfront costs for only the first 2,000 feet of any sewer-line extension projects. Previously, the district had charged $3 per foot on the entire project, which meant some developers had to pay large sums initially, long before they began work on their project.