DIXFIELD – Faced with the problem of thousands of dollars of unpaid water and sewer system bills, selectmen decided Monday night to aggressively pursue payments.
Dixfield selectmen are also Water and Sewer Department trustees.
“We’re going to get far more aggressive with our accounts than we have in the past,” Town Manager Nanci Allard said Tuesday afternoon.
In the past, outstanding bills amounted to $1,000, she said.
“But now, we have close to $30,000 that’s past due,” Allard said.
At the end of 2003, customers owed the municipal water system $14,142, and the sewer system, $15,404, Allard said.
But so far this year, outstanding water system bills have escalated to $28,000.
To rein in the delinquent customers, she said that liens would be placed on properties for unpaid sewer system bills. And, thanks to a new state law, Allard said town officials may now place liens on properties for outstanding water bills.
Additionally, she said that the town would still be billing customers on a quarterly basis, but as of April 1, billing will occur every month.
In other business, a 2003 audit of both departments revealed that several procedural errors had occurred.
Both Allard and Board of Selectmen Chairman Eugene Skibitsky said that the errors had to do with accounting practices.
“No money was mishandled,” Allard said.
According to auditor Patrick Joyce, Water and Sewer Department Administrative Assistant Darlene Brann had been using two methods to post and pay bills.
“Either method is acceptable, but using both increases the chance of a transaction being incorrectly posted,” Joyce said.
What started to happen, he added, was that invoices were posted through the general journal, but paid through the vendor payable system, which created a debit balance in one of the accounts-payable accounts.
Accounts-payable accounts usually have a credit balance, Joyce said.
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