Salem City Manager Annette Sola says the city staff is working on a new type of utility bill that hopefully will get delivered by the U.S. Postal Service on a more timely basis.
She says the current bills are getting delayed at the regional sorting facility in St. Louis because they are post card size with a perforation and won’t go through machinery as easily as letter sized mail.
“I believe that we can make things better by going with the paper statement that will be mailed in an actual envelope to the customers. It’s my understanding that they will be sorted quicker if we go that route. So its just trying to get bills to go out on time and educating people how to use our express bill pay if they don’t want paper statements. I would anticipate with the additional fees going that paper route there will be some additional charges for that.”
Sola says the city will continue to accept credit and debit card payments without fees.
“We have always absorbed those credit card fees and I think right now we will continue to do that. Especially with all of the issues we are having with the mail system. Anything we can do to try to help eliminate that is our goal right now.”
Sola says for those utilizing the online system, they will be able to drop the delivered bills to avoid any additional charges.
Sola hopes everything will be set for the letter size bills to be issued beginning by late this year.
