Commission weighs in‑house billing vs vendor billing as staff holds placeholder garbage fund budget

City finance staff told commissioners that the FY27 garbage fund is presented as a placeholder while the commission decides billing and collection strategy. Lee said the draft assumes $185,000 in both revenues and expenses pending a final decision on whether the city continues billing customers or shifts billing responsibilities directly to the contracted hauler.

Staff reported the city currently subsidizes the service by about $120,000 per year and estimated roughly 7,703 customer service locations. The commission discussed tradeoffs: direct vendor billing could produce cleaner unit accounting and faster vendor response for service requests, but commissioners and staff warned it could complicate enforcement of mandatory collection requirements and raised questions about how unpaid vendor bills would be handled for compliance and nuisance enforcement.

Lee and Marshall explained an operational problem that has driven the debate: service requests and can‑count reconciliations often route through the city, which appears as a single account in the vendor’s system, complicating address‑level tracking and creating lag between when a customer change occurs and when the vendor’s bill file is updated.

Staff said the current contract is a large line item (historic actual about $1.46 million, projected near $1.54 million after COLA) and that switching billing methods would require contract language changes and decisions about customer compliance enforcement and collection mechanisms. Staff pledged to return with more detailed answers and comparisons at an upcoming meeting.