RUSS?s resolution targets delinquent users

MOUNT UNION (GTNS) ? Over the past several months, the Regional Utility Services System Board of Directors has been tightening the clamps on delinquent users.

Directors, during their regular board meeting Wednesday, took another step in that direction, unanimously approving a resolution providing terms for the discontinuance of sanitary sewer service to delinquent individual users.

Under terms of the agreement, RUSS Executive Director Bruce Hudson is authorized to discontinue service to individual users for whom all of the following conditions apply:

? User?s account is 60 or more days past due;

? The governmental entity with whom RUSS has executed the 28E agreement, which governs the individual user?s sewer service, has failed to indemnify and reimburse RUSS for the potion of that user?s account which is 60 days past due within 60 days of having been provided a notice of the delinquency.

? A notice and opportunity for a hearing before the RUSS Executive Board has been provided to the individual in accordance with Iowa Code 384.84.

The resolution also provides terms that must be met if an individual user?s service is discontinued. Service to the user shall be reinstated after the user?s account is made current. The account may be made current pursuant to the applicable government entity (community) fulfilling its contractual duty to indemnify RUSS or the individual user paying the delinquent portion directly to RUSS.

The account will be considered current when RUSS is paid for all of the following items:

? The amount due from the user to RUSS for sewer service which is 60 days past due;

? Any other amount owed by the user to RUSS for sewer service at the time of reinstatement;

? The cost of installing a shut-off valve for the user;

? The cost of activating the shut-off value for the user;

? Any other costs, which RUSS reasonably incurred, related to terminating or reinstating service to the user.

?Once someone who is current and becomes 60 days past due, we can invoke this,? noted Deke Wood, RUSS board chairman.

Undoubtedly, the ordinance was sparked by RUSS? ?battle? with users from the City of Mt. Union over delinquent bills. However, Mt. Union was only mentioned briefly during the meeting.

Hudson told his board that Mt. Union had filed for and been granted a temporary injunction against RUSS from installing shut-off valves on users with delinquent bills. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for March 18, in Henry County District Court, Hudson reported.

Board members approved a two-percent, across-the-board wage increase for RUSS employees, effective with the start of the next fiscal year on July 1, 2016.

Hudson had recommended the two-percent increase and added the raise was included in the fiscal 2017 budget.

The executive director reminded the board that more employees might be needed in the future. ?We?re going to need help if all the things in limbo come to the wood pile,? said Hudson. ?We are stretched right now and it is going to be tough sledding working on additional things.?

RUSS board members were sympathetic to Hudson?s plight. ?When we take on additional work, we can only do so much,? said Lee Dimmitt, Jefferson County supervisor and RUSS board member. ?I hope that within 30 days, some of these circumstances are resolved and things will move forward.?

?If some of these things come to fruition, you are gong to have to hire additional staff,? agreed Wood.

Board members discussed delinquent accounts with members of the Pleasant Plain City Council. RUSS installed a system in the community three years ago. Three council members attended the meeting, inquiring whether the town would incur any liability for delinquent user accounts.

?I asked you to email me back in June 2015 who is past due so we could go talk to them,? said Kay Pohren, a Pleasant Plain council member.

Hudson said he didn?t see the community incurring responsibility for delinquent accounts. ?We are trying our best to alleviate headaches. I can almost guarantee you there might be headaches, but we will try to work through them?I think (the threat of) shut-off valves and small claims court will take care of it. We try to make sure the dots are connected.?

Dimmitt said there is a big difference between the situation in Pleasant Plain and the one in Mt. Union. ?The City of Mt. Union did not live up to its contractual agreement,? he explained. ?The systems are to be self-sufficient, and we have to have enough money to keep the systems afloat. We will take them (delinquent users) to small-claims court and shut them off if need be.?

RUSS board members meet again in regular session Wednesday, April 13, at 1 p.m., in the Henry County Emergency Management Building.