County Council Examines Wastewater And Collection Services

Friday, 1 March 2019 05:25

It is still early, but Oxford County council is looking at how to go about their billing process for their wastewater and collections services.

OXFORD COUNTY - Oxford County council is still in the early stages of evaluating how to handle their billing for their wastewater and collection services.

CAO Peter Crockett says they're still deciding on the next steps.

"We're in the early stages of evaluating where to go from, in terms of our billing, for our water and wastewater services. Right now it's in a contract that's coming towards the end, so we're working our way through a process of evaluating where we go next and how we move into the next tenure, if you will, of our billing contract. The report last night, although it ended up being tabled because of a quorum issue and the quorum issue was more created because of a conflict with a number of our council members being on the billing partners board. But at the end of the day, the work was the preliminary overview of where we are in terms of our billing collection process and now we'll go out and begin to talk to our billing partners and come up with some recommendations that'll come back to council in the early spring."

Council did a report, which estimates they can save $1.4 million over five years by centralizing the billing and collections at the County, while introducing other administrative changes.

Crockett says the idea is to save money.

"At the end of the day the question is 'what is the best way to go through the billing process to issue those bills?' There are a couple of different scenarios, obviously, and part of the work is to make sure that we're as effective and efficient as we possibly can be."

He says the options are to either keep using the current billing process or issue the bills internally, and they also need to determine whether there is a cost efficiency in doing so.