By JOSH NEWTON
Staff Writer
TAHLEQUAH —
After decades of working to reconnect customers’ utilities on cutoff days, the Tahlequah Public Works Authority is discontinuing that practice.
“For years, lots of years, we’ve had a practice, where a disconnect of utility services happens and a reconnect is needed, of doing reconnects on the same day,” said TPWA General Manager Mark Chesney. “Effective May 1, we’re going to start doing reconnects the next day.”
Only about 1 percent of TPWA’s customers are disconnected for non-payment of their bills over a year’s time, said Chesney.
“And the fact is, of that 1 percent, very many of those are disconnected multiple times a year, so it begins to become clear to us that there’s only a certain section of people we’re dealing with,” he said.
The communication process among office staff and field personnel, when trying to assign a work order for same-day reconnection, is often chaotic, said Chesney.
“It’s a very frenzied piece of work,” said Chesney. “While we’re doing that, in reality, we’re taking some time away from service technicians that they can spend doing other things for other customers.”
TPWA’s current practice isn’t one followed by many other utilities.
“I’ve looked really hard throughout the state, and even throughout the country, for utilities that have same-day reconnect, and I can’t find one,” said Chesney. “It’s logical to me why that’s so hard to find, because we know for ourselves the difficulty in maintaining that. We’ve done it for several years here – we’re talking decades here.”
In a year’s time, TPWA typically disconnects 1,200-1,500 customers, and the number changes based on seasons and other events.
TPWA has two cut-off days each month, one for each of its two billing cycles. The authority doesn’t disconnect services on Fridays, and also won’t do so during extreme temperature situations, said Chesney.
“So now [customers] can come in today and pay their bill and expect it to be reconnected tomorrow,” said Chesney.
On April 1, the authority also stopped paying interest to customers on their meter deposits.
“For several years, we have paid the customer interest on their meter deposit, and we’ve paid it at a rate of 2 percent,” said Chesney. “It showed up as a credit on the bill. Well, I think everybody knows that nobody is earning 2 percent nowadays on deposits; in fact, it’s a whole lot closer to zero than 2 percent.”
TPWA officials checked laws to ensure the authority is fulfilling its obligations, and learned it has no requirement to pay interest on deposits.
“So we just discontinued that practice altogether,” said Chesney. “Certainly when people no longer are customers, they get their deposit back, but in the meantime, we’re not paying interest on that anymore.”
Chesney said the actual interest, or credit, for customers was small – perhaps 19 or 20 cents a month for the average customer. By stopping that practice, the authority will save a bit of money in administrative costs associated with the former practice.
“But it’s not huge,” said Chesney.
Meanwhile, saving customers time and making the various utility processes operate more smoothly is being stressed at TPWA, as work continues on two new drive-up windows.
“That will make it faster for people,” said Chesney. “One thing that’s interesting about that is, unlike before, people can pull up with their credit card or debit card, and we’ll take that. It’s going to streamline the process out there.”
Customers can get in and out of the TPWA utility office faster by being prepared, with either their bill’s stub, or having their account number written on the check.
“Customers themselves can help minimize the wait time by having all their account information. That will help us speed up the process,” said Chesney.
The two new lanes are expected to be complete within the next two weeks – but don’t try getting reconnection services in drive-through fashion. For that, customers will need to take a trip inside, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday-Friday, so a work order can be completed.
