After a suspension on overdue water bills during COVID-19, City Hall has decided that from now on overdue amounts will be transferred to property tax accounts.
Before COVID-19, those with overdue amounts had their services disconnected.
"The process of water service disconnections requires a far greater amount of staff time and resources when compared to the process of transferring outstanding amounts to taxes," reads a City Hall report on the matter.
Disconnection of services is still recommended as a secondary method at the discretion of the Director of Finance.
The issue was discussed at this week’s city council meeting, and some councillors had some questions about the process.
“To the Director of Finance, I noticed that the change is going to be to the full discretion of yourself,” said Councillor Carmen DeRose during the meeting. “One of my concerns is that we’re going to run into an issue with people that just can’t afford to get caught up at this point with what is going on with the economy.”
Thorold’s Director of Finance Maria Mauro explained that because of this change the issue will be handled in a softer manner.
“What will happen for the majority of the cases is that it will be added to the tax bill,” Mauro told councillors. “There is an interest charge of 1.25 percent a month, but at least it gives them more time to address the issue prior to them losing the service.”
Councillor John Kenny also wondered if this change would mean that the overdue charge would be put as a lien on the house.
“Any outstanding water charges have always been a lien on the house and it runs with the property so this is no different from what we’re doing right now,” answered Mauro. “In terms of the secondary collection method that would be very few and far between. I can envision a situation where perhaps you have a property that is in the rears already. In that case we probably would go to a cut-off of the service.”
With the change in policy, Thorold will join Grimsby, Pelham, Port Colborne, St Catharines, Welland, and West Lincoln as the Niagara municipalities that do not use disconnections for water collection purposes.
