City Negligent On Saving Money: BENN
Pre-authorized payment withdrawals, such those for which a fee the city has created on property-tax payments, are highly automated.
It is as simple as pulling a file from a database and uploading it in a format designated by the bank. Person hours per month? Less than five minutes from start to finish, irrespective of the size of the file. The fee per transaction is negotiated with the bank. The only real accounting or administration work that takes place is data input for returned payments.
In the case of the company for which I was chief financial officer, and from which I retired half a decade ago, that fee was zero, because we maintained a pre-agreed minimum balance (which was not high). As for the few returned payments, we charged a processing fee, not unlike what the bank charges its customers if they bounce a cheque.
In short, that the city spends any money whatsoever on processing monthly collections is indicative of an organization that has not spent the time analyzing how and where they can save money. Given the track record of spending at city hall, this should not come as a surprise.
For You:
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Ottawa Turns Its Back To The Future: BENN
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so how can we fight back? what level of government do we need to contact to have this reversed? This is just more nickle and diming the residents of ottawa and we did not vote for councillors to be adding more fees to just about everything. Cancel the 2.0 landsdowne project and put this money towards this and other fees the city charges it’s residents.
Kathy, aside from pointing out to council as a whole the general lack of business acumen that is resident in city hall, there is little that can be done. At $5.50 (the city says they will only charge for 10 months, rather than 12) per household, it fits neatly at the bottom of an ever growing annoyance file. Something that irritates the taxpayer/user at a conceptual level but is too small to do anything tangible about. A concept that city hall is banking on across a large array of ‘user pay’ services.