City spokeswoman Pam Davis said customers are in the process of being assigned new invoice numbers with which they can access on an enhanced online system.
“We haven’t launched it yet. We sent letters 10 days ago, letting people know it’s on the way,” she said about enclosures in the Oct. 15 and Nov. 1 bills.
Those letters can be among the last paper documents customers receive from the sanitation department if they sign up for paperless bills.
Other options include electronic bill-pay with real-time posting to customers’ accounts and automatic monthly payments.
Davis said computer users will find the system to be “pretty self-explanatory.”
“They pretty much walk you through the process,” she said about information screens.
According to city Finance Director Gina Auld, the system was developed over a period of seven months by a team of staff members working with Oxford, Penn.-based contractor PC Scale Technologies.
Its development was spurred by customer requests and a “desire for an updated Windows platform,” she said.
The $80,000 system, which came out of the sanitation department’s budget, will save money, but Auld could not say how much.
“We cannot quantify until we complete several billing cycles,” she said.
Customers can find out more at a public meeting Nov. 8 at 6:30 p.m. at the Ben Robertson Community Center, 3753 Watts Drive.
“It’s just in case there are questions,” Davis said about the billing system’s inclusion on the agenda.
Other topics will include stormwater program management and transportation improvement plans.
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