McComb Mayor Whitney Rawlings proposed an increase in security deposits and certain fees associated with city water accounts at Tuesday’s city board work session.
Rawlings said it is common for people to set up water service, paying the standard $100 deposit, then move after only a few months, leaving an unpaid bill behind.
“Accounts are closed and the city’s left holding the bag,” he said.
Increasing the deposit requirement to $200 would protect the city, and “help us a great, great deal.”
He said a review of water accounts showed 2,500 with balances 90 days or more old. He added that some addresses have as many as 10 accounts connected with them.
“I see that as a problem,” Rawlings said.
He also discussed the fee charged to customers when their service is disconnected for nonpayment. At $20, it has not gone up since the 1990s, according to Vickie Cothern, the city’s utility service representative, who attended the board meeting.
Rawlings said between 250 and 300 accounts are shut off every month, and the time required for city employees to handle them is excessive.
Increasing the cutoff fee would “cut down on the volume of people that are going through it every month,” he said. “Maybe we would discourage some of these people from being delinquent.”
Rawlings proposed raising the cutoff fee to $50.
Selectman Donovan Hill expressed concern that a deposit increase could be prohibitive for people who already must pay deposits for other utilities and their residence itself.
The board will vote on the increases at their next meeting. If approved, the new charges would have to be advertised before implementation.
Railroad Boulevard
improvements discussed
Also on Tuesday, the board saw a preliminary plan for improvements to Railroad Boulevard, to be paid for with a federally funded Transportation Alternative Program (TAP) grant. The total project cost is $850,000. With a required 20 percent match, the city’s share will be about $158,000.
In presenting the initial concept, Russ Bryan of Neel-Schaffer engineering consultants said it could be changed according to the wishes of the board but the project must stay within its budget.
“Think of it as a full bucket of water. If you throw something in, some water’s going to come out the other side,” Bryan said.
The concept calls for the installation of a 2,400-square foot lawn in front of the Bo Diddley Pavilion, though selectman Tommy McKenzie suggested it be twice that size.
Bryan’s plan also includes:
• A strip of concrete pavers in front of the railroad depot to match decorative pavers in use elsewhere downtown.
• Landscaped islands along the street between the pavilion and Canal Street.
• Improved lighting to match street lamps on Main Street.
McKenzie also proposed lighting to keep the railroad shed illuminated at night.
Selectman Michael Cameron said, “I’m for scrapping every bit of green” in the plan “if any of them look like those did this morning” on Main Street.
He referred to landscaped areas near City Hall that have not been maintained adequately.
“If we can’t maintain it, I don’t want it,” he said.
Public Works director Philip Russell offered his own input regarding new landscaping. “Please, put irrigation on the plants and bushes.”
A representative from the Mississippi Department of Transportation, which will administer the TAP grant, will present a $632,558 check to the city at a June 30 ceremony at the Amtrak depot.
Audit review
The board also received the city audit Tuesday for the year ending September 30, 2015.
Deanne Tanksley, a CPA from the Gillon Group of Natchez, which has prepared the city’s audits for the last three years, reported “no findings,” meaning no problems, in the city’s financial condition and accounting practices.
Tanksley noted an earlier problem with what she termed “internal controls” relating to the collection and recording of court fines. A city court clerk stole as much as $1 million over six years, a crime that went unnoticed for so long because city hall was not in full communication with the clerks who collected fines at the police station.
The problem was ultimately corrected by using the city court computer system to generate a daily report of fines collected.
The city board must formally accept the audit, which it will do by vote at its next meeting, after which the document will be posted on the city’s website.
