The city is changing its policy on utility billing for tenants.

Currently, the city offers a request to bill tenant form to property owners as a courtesy.

That means property owners can have the city put utility bill accounts in a tenant’s name.

Ultimately, under state law, the property owner is responsible for paying utility bills.

Melissa Kinzler, city finance director, said “it’s Just become cumbersome, time consuming process.”

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She said city staff started looking at that process as the city is preparing for new federal lead and copper service line rules, since those require specific notifications.

Kinzler said that 2,855 accounts, or eight percent of the city’s utility customers, fall into the tenant account category, but they take up roughly 60 percent of staff time.

During the May 21 City Commission work session, Kinzler said staff was proposing to phase out the current process of putting tenants on utility accounts and instead send all utility bills to the property owner, who can then decide how to either charge residents directly or forward the bill to them.

That will simplify the city’s process for sending lead and copper rule notifications to property owners rather than having to send updates every times there’s a change in tenant, Kinzler said.

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The change also removes the city from issues between property owners and tenants, and staff will no longer have to process tenant forms, track delinquent tenant accounts or do final tenant meter reads, Kinzler said.

Kinzler told commissioners that the city finance department oversees utility billing and the policy change was coordinated between finance, legal and public works.

The city has offered property owners the option of putting tenants on utility bills for the last 20 years, Kinzler said.

“It does not make sense to keep doing the same process we have,” she told commissioners.

Part of the change is related to the utility billing software that the city is currently transitioning to.

Over the last few years, particularly since COVID, Kinzler said there’s been a lot of “interesting interactions” in their office between tenants and landlords, so staff ends up in landlord-tenant and collections issues that were “not pleasant.”

Kinzler said staff’s plan is to implement the new policy in June to coincide with the current software conversion but phase out the existing accounts and then shift delinquent accounts to property owners.

Kinzler said that each utility meter will be billed separately, as it is now, so property owners can tell how much units or tenants owe in utilities.

Commissioner Rick Tryon asked if the city had communicated the change to the landlord’s association or other impacted groups.

As of the May 21 meeting, city staff was asking for commission approval to implement the new policy and that it was internally driven to make city processes more efficient.

Tryon asked what staff would say to property owners who might be upset that it will be more work for them.

Kinzler said that the other 92 percent of customers were paying for staff to handle the issues related to 8 percent of customers with tenants.

Kinzler said the billing office would send notifications to affected utility customers and property owners.

Commissioner Joe McKenney said that their interactions with the public, as commissioners, are “not always pleasant” and that it often stems from a lack of understanding so he encouraged staff to do public outreach on the policy change.

Mayor Cory Reeves asked if it became a property owner’s debt if a tenant didn’t pay utility bills.

Kinzler reiterated that’s the case currently as under state law, a property owner is ultimately responsible for those bills.