Wichita City Council members have voted to restore a late fee for delinquent accounts in water and sewer services.  The late fee will be 1.5 percent of the overdue balance, and it will begin April 1st.

Staff had requested a five percent increase in December, but that was not approved by the Council when new rates and fees were approved for 2025.   Public Works Director Gary Janzen presented a request Tuesday asking for the 1.5 percent fee to continue.   Janzen said the late fees may be waived as an incentive for the customer to make a payment.   He said every situation is different and staff can waive fees under reasonable circumstances, and they will work with customers as much as possible.

Janzen said there are currently over 12,000 delinquent accounts and at the end of 2024, $22.6 million was past due.  The late fees are intended to recover costs of staff time, materials and other expenses, and when fees are waived the expense is ultimately passed on to the rest of the customer base.  If service is disconnected and the account goes to collections, that brings additional costs which are not recovered.  Uncollected amounts are eventually written off as a “bad debt” expense.

Janzen said the Water Utility has two assistance programs to help customers who are behind on payments, and the city is trying to strike a balance between helping individual customers and protecting the customer base overall.    The average annual revenue from late fees is $1.2 million, which covers the cost of managing late payments and partially offsets the average annual bad debt expense of $2.4 million.

The Council voted 4-3 to approve a 1.5 percent late fee.  Mayor Lily Wu, Vice Mayor J.V. Johnston and Council Member Becky Tuttle voted no.   Mayor Wu said a five percent late fee would be reasonable in recovering costs from delinquent accounts.