After a year-and-a-half of thoughtful negotiations, the City Council and the administration have reached an agreement that has ended the debate on a possible mid-year increase of New York City’s water rates.
We’ve all heard stories of the 75-year-old grandmother who goes to the mailbox one morning to find a $20,000 water bill. Despite the Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) recent efforts to modernize their bill collection techniques, the stories of billing mistakes have shaken the public’s confidence in the agency over the years.
Nevertheless, the fact remained that DEP faced a $200 million shortfall in the coming fiscal year. Many ideas by many different parties were floated as possible remedies for the budget gap.
The Water Board wanted to implement an unprecedented mid-year 18 percent rate hike on the city’s water rates. The administration proposed granting DEP a powerful new authority to sell liens that are routinely placed on delinquent properties to private bill collectors who can compel payment.
The Council had its own ideas.
We have long wanted to address the agency’s poor collection rate - 85 percent, compared to roughly 95 to 99 percent in other major urban centers. We recognized that DEP needed the power to go after deadbeat property owners who were not paying their bills. However, we also feared for the individuals who might lose their property because of an accounting error in the agency.
Because of our collaboration, DEP decided to bring in some outside help to tackle the problems in its billing and customer service operations. The consultants came up with a plan that made important improvements to the billing process, most notably creating an ombudsman’s office within DEP to answer billing questions.
The new office will provide special assistance to all residential and commercial account holders facing liens sales and undergoing the lien sale process. Customers will have the right to a dispute hearing before the ombudsman if they contend they have been wrongly billed.
In addition, the Council established important protections for some of the city’s most vulnerable homeowners - senior citizens, the disabled, low-income families and owners of single-family homes. All homeowners in these categories will be exempted from the lien sale process.
DEP will also install automated meter reading systems by December 2010. With these new meters in place, hopefully no one will have to go through the shock of receiving a jaw-dropping water bill ever again.
Over the coming year, we will monitor how DEP uses this new authority. With this new power in place, we know that talks of a rate increase will run dry. In the meantime, we are keeping money where it belongs - in New Yorkers’ pockets.
Christine C. Quinn is Speaker of the City Council, Councilmember David Weprin is Chair of the Finance Committee and Councilmember James Gennaro is Chair of the Environmental Protection Committee.
