North Battleford Mayor Ryan Bater seen at a recent council meeting. The city will be meeting with landlords to discuss a proposal to put all renters' water utility accounts onto the property owners' accounts names directly instead. (file photo/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

In the chambers

City gathering feedback on idea of property owners holding renters’ water utilities accounts

Apr 9, 2019 | 2:05 PM

North Battleford city hall is planning to start discussions with landlords on having them manage renters’ utility accounts for easier management — particularly when it comes to shutting the water off.

Mayor Ryan Bater said several years ago, staff introduced a new policy that would put renters’ defaulted utility payments onto property owners’ tax roll as a fail-safe.

The new proposal from administration would put utilities’ under property owners’ names, not renters anymore.

“Council has only approved a discussion with landlords at this point; we haven’t approved the policy,” Bater said. “But this new idea would be to actually put the utility accounts into the property owners’ names directly. It’s just a step further for that.”

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The mayor said the city wants to get feedback from property owners/landlords on the issue before making any decisions.

Bater mentioned Finance Director Steve Brown will be working on gathering input on what Bater calls a concern for the city.

“There are a lot of staff hours, and we have some capacity issues,” he said. “There are a lot of dollars involved.”

Brown recommended the city meet with the top 10 landlords in North Battleford with the most properties, before proposing amending any bylaws or policies.

In his report, Brown cited other cities in the province that put policies in place requiring renters’ utility accounts be in the owners’ names only.

The finance director said the city may need to add more staffing if it continues with the status quo in dealing with managing water shut offs for accounts, to help reduce its workload.

He indicated city workers are putting in too much time going to renters’ properties to deal with water shut-off work.

Brown said staff spend significant hours every month in managing shut offs for utility accounts for both renters’ and owners’ accounts.

While public works staff allocate six staff to manage water shut-offs externally, city staff also invest a lot of time in related work.

In 2018, the shut offs for five per cent of properties cost city staff 800 hours, 40 per cent of one staff members’ time, and 415 equipment hours.

Brown said the workload falls to one utility clerk who looks after 5,000 properties in the city. The city’s payroll clerk and finance manager also help on occasion he said, which is concerning as it takes them away from other important tasks.

“The additional workload for staff is causing some struggles in areas around payroll, and the existing utility clerk is quite often overwhelmed with work,” Brown said.

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angela.brown@jpbg.ca

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