SNOW HILL — Greene County has merged its utility collection with the tax collections offices for more efficiency of personnel.
Along with that consolidation, the county will now attempt to collect unpaid utility bills — more than $88,000 from 2003 to the present — through the Debt Setoff Program, which is currently used to collect unpaid property taxes and Emergency Medical Services fees.
In addition, the deadline before receiving a penalty for utility bill payments will be moved up to 5 p.m. on the 10th day of each month, rather than prior to the opening of business on the 11th day of the month, beginning Sept. 10.
With the merge, Tax Administrator Becky Sutton is now overseeing the water collections. She said it has been taking too long to record the water bills that are placed in the night deposit box after 5 p.m. on the 10th day of the month and before the county office opens on the morning of the 11th day.
“It takes half a day to work with those accounts and make sure that you’re not making a mistake,” she said about the bills that come in after 5 p.m. on the 10th day. “… It’s a move forward to a normal day’s worth of work.”
The deadline change and merger were measures recommended by a task force set up to review the efficiency of county operations. Setting up a task force was recommended by the Local Government Commission following the county’s recent financial distress.
The uncollected utility bill of more than $88,000 is the total uncollected debt for the last 10 years, County Finance Officer Sandy Barss said.
“Due to that merge,” she said, “they now can go back and try to collect some of this bill at least 60 days old.”
No information was immediately available for the total debt that would have been calculated for any of the past years.
The process includes notifying water customers of their debt deadline before the debt being placed in the collections program, Sutton said
If the debts are not paid by the deadline, they will be submitted to a clearinghouse to offset the customers’ income tax refunds and/or lottery winnings, she said.
The county performs the billing for South Greene Water Corporation, but its board will would have to decide whether it would want their customer debts to be collected through the Debt Setoff Program.
Margaret Fisher can be reached at 252-559-1082 or Margaret.Fisher@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @MargaretFishr.
Breakout box:
New deadline for Greene water bills
Greene County Water Department and South Greene Water Corporation customers’ water bill deadline will be 5 p.m. on the 10th of each month effective Sept. 10. For more information, call 252-747-2644.