Columbus Light and Water leaders already are forming plans to return to normal after the COVID-19 pandemic.
During Thursday’s virtual board of directors meeting, General Manager Todd Gale addressed the idea of arrangements for individual customers who could suffer disconnection due to delinquent payments. Currently, 8 percent — more than 1,000 customers — are at risk of being disconnected.
While that order is in place, CLW and other utilities across the state are not disconnecting utilities for lack of payment, but the bills are racking up.
Gale described a plan — which, he told The Dispatch after the meeting, will “more likely than not” be implemented once Gov. Tate Reeves lifts Mississippi’s shelter-in-place order — where customers could agree to have the amount of their missed utilities payments divided over the ensuing 12 months. The average monthly bill is $140 to $150, he said, which would mean customers three months behind would owe less than $40 per month as they work to make up their debt.
“The only (other) way to recoup some of these losses would be a rate increase, and we don’t want to do that,” Gale said in the meeting.
CLW board chair Brandy Gardner agreed that a rate increase would be a misstep, voicing support for Gale’s plan.
“I think that’s a great start,” Gardner said in the meeting. “I think that it kind of gives people some kind of peace of mind.”
Gale said that as of last Friday, CLW customers had unpaid debts totaling about $230,000 — a number that has continued to rise each day. But he stressed that the utility remains financially stable and has not yet needed to pursue loans to make ends meet.
Chief Financial Officer Mike Bernsen said at Thursday’s meeting that while CLW expected to break even, it actually made a profit on electric services in March. The utility’s year-to-date estimates show a projected deficit of roughly $200,000, Bernsen said that figure is “not too bad” considering the pandemic’s volatility.
“We always look for bright spots in dark times,” Bernsen said. “… People staying at home, they’re turning the switches on a lot more, and they’re running the faucets a lot more.”
SUD monitoring situation, weighing action
Starkville Utilities Department General Manager Terry Kemp told The Dispatch on Thursday the utility has been regularly hearing from customers concerned about shutoffs and arrangements due to the pandemic.
SUD, unlike CLW, hasn’t seen a large increase in the number of customers who could be subject to disconnection — so far, anyway, the customers whose financial issues predated the pandemic comprise the bulk of that population.
“We’ll probably have a better feel for what that number is in about two more weeks when we finish a cycle,” Kemp said. “But right now, it appears that our numbers are pretty consistent with what they were prior to this virus starting. It’s the same group, and it goes back prior to that, and so we’ve not seen a big spike yet.
“Our hope is that in the near future we’ll be able to start back on our normal practices, but part of that is going to be continuing to work with people as their needs are identified,” he added.
He said the utility is making a push to ensure its customers stay caught up with their bills, which can tend to get out of hand after months without making a payment.
“If people get three, four months behind with no payments, that amount can be quite large,” Kemp said.
He said SUD — which has not taken out loans and does not anticipate needing to — has no concrete plan like that of CLW in terms of delinquent pay arrangements, hoping it will take less than a full year for customers to be able to pay their debts.
“Right now, we’re only into it one month or two months, and generally you would look for coming out of it the same time that it took to get in,” Kemp said.
When customers can return to work will be a critical point for the utility; so too will be the date when Reeves rescinds the state’s shelter-in-place order.
“If the governor were to lift that, I do think that takes some of the pressure off and creates more flexibility as we go forward for the people to make those payments,” Kemp said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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