Columbia water customers have $14 million in past due bills amid pandemic
For nearly a year, the city of Columbia suspended disconnection of water service to customers as the coronavirus pandemic raged on and put many people out of work.
But as COVID-19 statistics have begun to ease and the city has started turning back toward normalcy, there is a cost for that year in which disconnections for nonpayment of water bills was halted: City water customers now collectively owe $14.2 million in past due balances, as of April 15. That’s up sharply from February 2020, when the collective past due balance for customers was $4.6 million.
The city suspended disconnections for nonpayment of water bills in March 2020 and that remained in effect until this February.
“I think we did what we had to do when the pandemic hit,” second-term at-large City Councilman Howard Duvall told The State. “People were in really bad financial condition. But, yes, we need to collect those past due debts.”
Assistant City Manager Clint Shealy said that during the time water cutoffs were suspended, the city continued sending reminders to customers to pay their water bills. In October, it put customers with past due balances in a six-month payment arrangement program, and was able to collect several million dollars through that initiative.
“Some folks were making payments, and some were not,” Shealy said. “Some continued to ignore it.”
Then, in January, with past due balances continuing to balloon, Council and city staff decided the time had come to resume cutoffs.
“We were definitely being compassionate and working with our customers as best we could, but we collectively realized that we needed to begin disconnecting for nonpayment,” Shealy said.
Customers were notified in mid-January that disconnections would resume in mid-February
The city has been disconnecting several hundred customers per week. Shealy said the vast majority of those customers have been able to make a partial payment and get their service cut back on the same day or the next day.
“We go back out and try to do it the same day, get their water service reconnected,” Shealy said. “We try to be responsive. Some previous policies may have said, ‘If you haven’t honored your payment arrangement, then you’ve got to pay the full balance due before you get water restored.’ We recognize that would be very, very difficult. So the compassionate response is, make that first installment, we’ll get your water restored and let’s continue making these payments.”
The city has a total of nearly 150,000 water customers.
The return of water disconnections seems to be slowing the growth of past due balances. Customers collectively had $14.4 million in past due balances as of March 15, and that dipped to $14.2 in April.
“We’ve stemmed the tide, so to speak,” Shealy said. “We are not continuing to accumulate those numbers and they are maybe starting to come down a little bit. I think the word getting out that we are disconnecting for nonpayment has made folks start honoring those payment arrangements.”
Shealy and Duvall noted there are programs that citizens can tap into for rental and utility assistance. For instance, Richland County got a $12.5 million grant from U.S. Treasury to help people who have experienced a loss of or reduction of income or experienced financial hardships because of COVID-19.
City Council sought to exercise understanding during the nearly yearlong period in which service disconnections for nonpayment were suspended, Duvall said. But there comes a point where the city had to rekindle cutoffs as a tool to claw revenue back into the city’s coffers.
“We cannot allow Columbia’s (water department) to absorb that sort of hit,” the Councilman said. “We need to make them whole again. There are (assistance programs) available for that purpose, and I think we need to help connect people who can use them.”
This story was originally published April 28, 2021 at 11:03 AM.
