Customer was not called back until 26 days later
St. Martinville – St. Martinville Councilwoman Carol Frederick sought some clarity about the city’s utilities department callback time after a customer went nearly a month before being called back following a question they had about a bill.
Frederick brought the matter up at Monday’s City Council meeting and asked if there is a policy for how long it should take for the city to respond to a customer inquiry.
She had brought the issue of large bills up at last month’s meeting after five of the residents in her district had seen no withdrawals for their bills for a month or more, then suddenly had a big autodraft as the new meters and software caught up to the correct readings. Customers can sign up to have money withdrawn automatically from their account at billing time rather than paying the bill with a check or cash or online.
One customer’s account saw a $1,200 withdrawal, and Frederick said he reached out to the city’s utility department for clarification on the issue on Nov. 18, three days after receiving the bill.
Response
He did not receive a call back before the Dec. 1 meeting so he reached out to Frederick, who brought the issue up at that meeting.
“I just want to say, there’s not a lot of people in St. Martinville that could have $1,200 pulled out of their account with no warning, heads up about it,” Frederick said. “And that seems like a fair thing to do.”
But that wasn’t the main issue she was asking about. The customer reached out to the utilities department, and Frederick also did on his behalf, but it wasn’t until Dec. 11 that a voicemail was left for him from the city, 26 days after he first asked about the issue.
“Twenty-six days from the time that money was pulled out of his account until he got a follow-up voicemail,” Frederick said. “That’s bad business. We need to do better than that. So do we have any policy in place when people (call)? It’s easy to say somebody didn’t call, or I didn’t get the message, but there has to be a standard process of how people call in, they have a concern, we address that concern, get back with them, follow up, and follow through with it.”
Mayor Jason Willis argued that customers should know when they get bills that are only a few dollars for a few months, they should know that eventually they’re going to get a bigger bill as the system catches up to faulty meter readings.
The city is converting to new electric meters and to new water meters also as the water system is consolidated with two nearby systems for a new water district. That and new software leads to issues with low or high meter readings, he said.
Frederick said she was not arguing that customers should be aware that they could receive a big bill or automated withdrawal if for a month or two they have abnormally low bills.
She instead wanted to make sure that any customer who calls the city gets a timely response from city employees to their questions.
Councilwoman Flo Chatman also said that too many times the only things brought up at meetings are negatives, and that city employees also should be praised when they do a good job.
Frederick again said her issue was not to criticize employees, merely to find out of there is a policy regarding how long it should take to respond, and if not, the city should look into setting such a policy.
Willis said that the department head told him she had not received any messages about the account prior to the previous meeting when Frederick brought the issue up initially.
But Frederick said that someone in the electric department made a note dated Nov. 18 that the customer had asked for clarification about the billing and the department head initialed the paper, meaning she had seen it prior to the Dec. 1 meeting.
Additionally, someone in the department had noted on the account on Oct. 28 that the customer had not been billed for a few months.
“So even at that time, someone could have called to say, hey, there’s a problem, we’re going to have to bill you this (full amount for a few months),” Frederick said. “I was just going with ‘let’s do better in contacting (people),’ but frankly, saying we didn’t get any messages, well, that’s not true because there’s documentation that a message was left.”
Frederick again stressed she wasn’t looking to argue any of those issues, just that the time to respond to the customer was too long.
“So again, my point is, 26 days from the time the money was pulled out (of the account), 44 days from the time we saw, as a city, we have a billing problem, we haven’t been billing correctly, and still nobody has reached out to talk and to address the situation,” she said.
Noise issues
St. Martinville resident Errol Greig Jr. asked if the city’s noise ordinances cover bars after he had complained about a bar a half mile from his house that had been playing loud music on a recent Sunday night after 10 p.m.
Greig said the issue isn’t one that occurs every week but once every few months. On this occasion, a responding police officer told Greig that the bar wasn’t covered by the city’s noise ordinances because it was licensed as a bar.
The mayor said the issue wasn’t music being played in the bar because if it was the noise would be heard every night the bar is open. Instead, it likely was caused by vehicles parked at the bar, or perhaps at a nearby car wash, a popular hangout spot for some, playing their music loudly.
Police Chief Ricky Martin told the city council that the police usually deal with the issue under the city’s public nuisance ordinance rather than the noise ordinance, and that the officer should have had whoever was responsible turn the music down.
The police department does have a noise meter that it can use to tell if the sound is above a certain level, but the city’s ordinances don’t specify a level as being too noisy, so the public nuisance ordinance is usually what is used to enforce the noise levels, he said.
New ordinances
The city council adopted two new ordinances, one abandoning Solitude Street and Solitude Lane, and the other to change the regular council meeting time from 6 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. starts. The next council meeting will be Tuesday, Jan. 20.
The council also amended an ordinance relating to permits for use of city right of ways. The change is to allow the head of the electric department to approve permits if the right of way affects only electric utilities, rather than having to go through the zoning department for a permit.
