The Billerica Minuteman put up an article on the 24th of this month that raised some concern. The article discloses that this town has over $151,000.00 in unpaid water bills from “hundreds” of residents in town. These are significant figures, but they are not my bottom line worry.
DPW Director, Abdul Alkhatib, states, “The problem is, even when you collect the money, that part takes a lot of administrative effort to get there. The town does not recover that.” The obvious question, then, why is the town not factoring in these expenses when calculating delivery charges in a manner that contributes to a balanced budget?
How many businesses would hire an employee and not factor salary, benefits and other operating expenses into the fees they charge? Most do so to make a profit, and I understand that Billerica town government is not out to make a profit; nor should it. Should any town or non-profit operate by spending more to provide services than the reimbursement they receive to obtain desired results with a zero profit balance? The answer is unequivocally, no.
Mr. Alkhatib goes on to report that the town is sending notices of non-payment, demand letters, and letters of service termination at a cost that is also not being reimbursed. Again, the question is why are these costs not being factored into the quarterly billing with the intent of maintaining a zero balance between services delivered and services received?
The town does apply property liens for non-payment of such bills, fees or taxes. It is good that they are now considering placing liens on the property of delinquent payers of water/sewer services and letting the tax collector’s office deal with delinquents.
I hope that as part of the lien there is either direct costs assigned to recoup the ancillary costs of postage and man-hours and benefit costs paid for town workers to perform what should be an unnecessary task. If not, the perhaps an interest rate suitable to cover all of these other costs should be applied in order to clear the lien.
The bottom line is that town government exists to perform the people’s business. It does not exist to function as a charity and undercharge for services to some at the expense of the rest of us. Common sense would instruct a 12 year old that one cannot balance a budget if one gives away more than one takes in, and the objective of any town manager or board of selectmen is to run on a balanced budget.
Tony said:
If the town was a business, it would have been forced to close it’s doors along time ago. This is one of the problems with government. They do a bad job of understanding costs to do business. If the town did run more like a business that only needs to break even, the probably could be run more efficiently and better predicts future costs.