City to cut off water delivery to overdue customers

DENISE RIDEOUT

Come Sept. 27, the city will stop delivering water to hundreds of households in Iqaluit unless the homeowners pay their overdue water bills.

The city is owed more than $200,000 from about 440 households and businesses. Many of the payments are more than 90 days late.

Some of the bills are as low as $39. The highest is $2,000. Most at the higher end are businesses and retail outlets.

The City of Iqaluit’s finance department can’t wait any longer for the money, said comptroller John Hussey.

If payment arrangements aren’t made by next Friday, the water trucks will stop filling water tanks and valves on utilidor pipes will be shut off at 3 p.m.

“It’s not an action the city likes to take,” Hussey said in an interview.

But at the same time, if we don’t, what kind of message are we sending to the general public? Are we going to allow everybody not to come in and pay for utilities?”

Hussey points out, however, that the city is not denying access to water. “We don’t cut people off from water. I guess there’s a perception out there that the city is cutting people off water. We don’t cut anybody off of water. We cut the delivery of water off,” he said.

Stopping delivery doesn’t put the city at risk of liability for health or sanitary problems that might arise from people not being able to wash themselves, clean dishes and laundry or flush their toilets, he added.

With no trucks coming to fill up tanks and utilidor pipes shut off, residents and business owners will have to find their own way to get the water they need.

“They can come to the city hall and collect water themselves from the fire station and pay for it there,” Hussey said.

“We’re not denying anybody water. We’re not denying them water at all. We’re stopping delivery. They still have the right to come to city hall and pick up water at the fire station.”

Water from the fire station will sell at its normal rates: 0.035¢ per litre for households and 0.010¢ per litre for commercial businesses.

Bills late going out

Finance officers first noticed the late water bills when they were calculating their year-end revenue. They found that the accounts receivable were quite high, Hussey said.

Part of the reason for the late payments is that water bills were late going out. That’s because during last summer’s three-month labour dispute, the city didn’t bill for water and sewer fees.

Following the dispute, the finance office put extra emphasis on getting bills out to the rate payers. But not everyone made payments.

“Some people started coming in and paying. But, as in all situations, some people don’t pay. They have their reasons for not paying,” he said.

That’s when finance officers, following the rules outlined in bylaw 200, set the wheels in motion for getting those payments.

This summer, finance officers put together a list of accounts that were 30, 60, 90 and 120 days overdue.
“We put a little bit of a push on this summer,” Hussey said. “We decided to go after it more in the summer because in the cold of the winter is not a good time to decide not to deliver water to someone because of freezing pipes.”

The next step in the collection process involved phoning the homeowners and businesses to remind them to pay.

If no payment was remitted, the finance department sent out a notice.

When that tactic didn’t work, the city informed the still-overdue homeowners and businesses that water delivery would cease in two weeks.

Hussey said Iqaluit isn’t the only Nunavut municipality to go to this extent to get the water fees its owed.

“My understanding is that lately other hamlets are experiencing the same problem with the collection of water bills. They’ve taken the same action that the City of Iqaluit has taken. They’re also stopping delivery,” Hussey said.

Unlike Iqaluit, which is tax-based, other hamlets rely on water and sewer fees as a source of revenue.