Starting in October, the Jefferson County Public Utility District plans to charge a $5 late fee to any electric, water, sewer or combination residential PUD account not paid by the bill's due date.

PUD Communications Manager Will O'Donnell clarified a three business days' grace period would be given before any late fees are assessed, and fees are only to be assessed to accounts owing $50.01 or more.

For commercial accounts, O'Donnell specified the late fee would be either 1 percent of the amount due, or $5, whichever is greater.

He added the three business days' grace period applies to commercial accounts as well, as does the $50.01 fee threshold.

According to PUD Customer Service Manager Jean Hall, the late fee officially goes into effect for the billing cycle beginning Oct. 10, so any late fees applied would not appear on the customer's bill until November.

The PUD Board of Commissioners voted in July to approve the re-instatement of late fees, which were suspended in 2013, after the utility struggled with its billing systems, following the transition to operating the county's electrical grid.

DROP IN SHUTOFFS

In January of 2013, the PUD turned off the power to 295 households for non-payment. By contrast, in January of 2017, only 16 households were disconnected for a failure to pay.

Jim Parker, who was the general manager of the PUD in 2017, told The Leader at the time the PUD had been experiencing difficulty in getting its customers to pay on time, in the wake of the PUD taking over the East Jefferson County power system from Puget Sound Energy in April of 2013.

Parker also told The Leader the problem was most pronounced between late 2013 and early 2014, with a peak number of 295 customers disconnected in January of 2014, followed by 181 customers disconnected in February of 2014, and 175 customers disconnected in March of 2014.

In February of 2017, Parker told The Leader the Jefferson County PUD is one of the few PUDs that was not then charging late fees to customers who were late in paying their bills.

TIMES CHANGE

In September of this year, Hall told The Leader the purpose of the fees is threefold: 1) to help encourage delinquent customers to pay on time, 2) to help recoup the extra labor costs incurred in dealing with past due accounts, and 3) to take better advantage of automated processing abilities available within the PUD's billing software.

The PUD Board approved the reinstatement of late fees on the recommendation of the PUD's staff and Citizen Advisory Board, which studied the issue during the spring of 2018.