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Monday, June 16, 2008

New Bride Doesn’t Like City Utilities’ Fee

A Panama City woman has a beef with the utilities’ department.  She wanted to update her account, but is told to do so; she will have to pay up.  When that happened, she thought it was unfair so she contacted News 13 for help.  Is this fee really necessary?  More on the concerns over this fee and what I found out in this News 13 Problem Solver report.

Leanna Tribaldos recently got married and wanted to bring her account information up to date with Panama City Utilities…name change, etc.  She made a phone call.  Tribaldos says, “I would have to go by I could not just mail it in… They said there would be a fee of 25 dollars and I was shocked ... 25 dollars?”

She got a quick response from City Clerk Mike Bush.  Tribaldos says, “City’s code ordinances which says all customers shall pay 25 dollars service change when changing name.” She also says, “it takes two seconds I would think I don’t know to pull up account on computer and change the name and click save.” And, another issue...”they have to look at who is being charged this.  It is mostly women who do the changing name cause men don’t change their name that often.”

So I brought the questions and concerns straight to city hall.  Why should someone have to pay a fee to update their account information?
Terri Lillard is Panama City’s Deputy City Clerk and sympathizes with Leanna Tribaldos.  Lillard says, “it is unfortunate and there is a lot of reasons to change their information.” I asked if the city has gotten complaints about people having to pay a fee?  According to Lillard, “Not that I know of in particular...but I don’t think any of us like paying fees.” So, I asked if there is a good valid reason for this fee.  Lillard says, “Oh yes.”

Ms. Lillard says the utilities fee has been effect since 2003. She says at that time, there was a lot of activity with people changing account information.  It has dropped from 10 to 15 changes per week to 10 to 15 per month.  Lillard says, “But, another way to look at it, to change a name is to change account. And rather than closing that account and going thru process of opening a new account and paying new deposit , connection fee, they came up this nominal 25 dollar charge.”

I asked Deputy City Clerk Lillard if the city might look again at the ordinance and perhaps forgo the fee on a simple account name change.  She says unfortunately at this time, there are no plans to revise the ordinance.  For now, Leanna Tribaldos says her account will stay like it is.

I did check with other agencies to see if they charge service fees to update accounts for name changes and so forth.  There are no such fees for Panama City Beach Water Department, Lynn Haven, Springfield or Gulf Power.




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