It wasn’t part of the planned discussion, but a seminar at City Hall on Wednesday on keeping rental properties crime-free digressed at one point into a landlord gripe session against Shawano Municipal Utilities.
Some landlords questioned why utility bills defaulted on by their tenants end up on property owners’ tax rolls.
“We have to pay for their power,” property owner Scott Jung said.
Jung recounted a story of tenants who took advantage of laws prohibiting the disconnection of services over the winter, only to have those tenants abscond in the spring.
He said those tenants moved to Green Bay, where they were able to establish new utility services with no problem, while he was left with a bill of hundreds of dollars. The bill eventually was added to Jung’s municipal tax bill.
Even some landlords connected with the city — such as Shawano Plan Commission member Jeanne Cronce — had issue with the practice.
“That doesn’t make sense to me at all,” she said.
SMU General Manager and City Administrator Brian Knapp said during an interview Thursday that the practice “is a longstanding, legal statutory means of collecting past due bills.”
Knapp said it’s something SMU and other utilities have done for a very long time.
“Somebody has to pay for it,” he said.
Knapp said the alternative would be to add those defaulted payments to the rates paid by SMU customers; something the state Public Service Commission (PSC) doesn’t allow.
Knapp said SMU has been “fairly aggressive” in disconnecting customers who don’t pay their bills, but he conceded many take advantage of the winter moratorium.
Knapp also said there is a bad debt database that identifies absconders who haven’t paid their utility bills, but municipal utilities are not allowed to be a part of it. He said that is because of a PSC ruling that said municipalities have other collection alternatives, such as placing bad debts on the tax rolls.
One positive development for landlords, however, is a recent change in law that allows utilities to share information about bad utility debts.
Knapp said that if a landlord checks with SMU on a prospective tenant, the utility can tell them, “they left us with a bad debt.”