City to take over issuing wastewater bills in March
DRIPPING SPRINGS — At its Feb. 18 meeting, Dripping Springs City Council unanimously approved the hiring of a second utility billing clerk, which is also in coordination with the city taking over the responsibility of issuing wastewater utility bills.
The city currently has an agreement with the Dripping Springs Water Supply Corporation (DSWSC) to issue the city’s wastewater utility bills to customers. However, beginning in March, the city of Dripping Springs will be taking over the responsibility, estimating more than 2,500 customers who DSWSC is currently billing, which is a jump from the city’s current 150-200 water customers, according to deputy city administrator Shawn Cox.
“Now some of those, once everything is completely set up, we do anticipate going to like automatic billing … That's still a process that has to go through our system. The primary concern we have is just the influx of calls that we're going to receive and service requests, just information related to 2,500 new customers,” Cox explained.
According to Cox, DSWSC has approximately five positions that can and do assist with billing. This includes help with billing, collections and customer service. Because wastewater bills will be calculated using winter averaging, an additional billing clerk should provide the necessary coverage needed, according to agenda documents.
“They have around five people throughout the building that can help with utility building, but they do have utility billing clerks,” Cox explained. “They have account reps or other managers that are familiar with the system, so they can assist in those calls. We'll have the same thing [with] myself, the finance department [and] other admins will be able to help answer some of those just basic utility questions. But as we get into setting up services, maybe invoices for some of those, doing work orders for the utility crews, we anticipate that that's going to be more than a one-person job.”
The city is looking at starting the new position at $50,000 — $64,123, including benefits — per year. There is also currently an unfilled lead utility operator position budgeted at $66,560.00.
The early salary savings, which is approximately $25,000 so far, can provide coverage for the position without the need for a budget amendment at this time, according to Cox. Additionally, once the city takes over billing responsibilities, it will save approximately $11,500 each month or $69,000 through the end of the fiscal year.
“Adding the position itself already saves us some money, year over year, but there is also this year, a lead utility operator that has yet to be filled. It's in the process of being filled, but we have those months of savings in our budget now,” Cox said. “It’s something that we can handle in our budget. We would do a cleanup at the end of the year, like we typically do if we add some of those new positions, just to reallocate some of that funding.”
DSWC should be contacting their customers to make them aware of the billing change and Cox said that the city will also be reaching out to those customers they are bringing in.
Dripping Springs City Council meets next at 6 p.m. March 4.
