AN ORDINANCE introduced by City Manager Dr. Robert M. Perez, related to imposing a real estate lien, pursuant to K.S.A. 12-808c, upon certain lots and pieces of ground in Shawnee County, Kansas, to pay the cost for utility services where such payments to the City have not been made due to neglect, failure or refusal to pay.

Voting Requirement: Action requires at least six (6) votes of the Governing Body.

(Approval will allow the imposition of charges for delinquent utility accounts on the tax rolls in the amount of $125,854.58.)

Action requires at least six (6) votes of the Governing Body.

Whether to authorize the imposition of liens on properties that have received utility services but have failed to pay for such services.

Staff recommends the Governing Body move to adopt the ordinance when considered.

The City of Topeka Utility provides utility services for water, wastewater, stormwater and fire line services to a variety of customers located both inside and outside the city limits. When customer utility bills become delinquent, our normal delinquency controls are to turn off the water service to the customer until the customer makes full payment on the delinquent amounts. Some customers receive wastewater service and stormwater service from the City but no water service. This greatly reduces our ability to get the customer to pay delinquent amounts since we cannot shut off their water service. Most of these are customers of rural water districts and the rural water district cannot shut off water service for failure of a customer to pay a bill owed to the City. The customers identified in this document are delinquent in payment for services provided by the City. State law permits the City to institute a lien on the property of these customers in order to recover payment for services rendered. This ordinance is passed every September so that the county clerk has sufficient time to add the utility fees to the tax statement that is issued in November.

Collection of delinquent utility accounts in the amount of $125,854.58.

Not Applicable.