HUBBARD — Treasurer Marsha Ruha noted the amount of money the city has lost from delinquent utility payments — which is why she hopes to crack down on them.

The city’s utilities committee heard from Ruha on Monday, who said her office has been having weekly meetings to fix the problem of serious delinquencies in the city — especially habitual ones — and how to tackle them.

“To illustrate how serious it is, when we look at an aging report through all of our books, as of February, the delinquency is $416,000,” Ruha said.

Ruha said it starts with the city’s utilities applications, explaining that they plan on asking for a copy of the applicant’s most recent utility bills, regarding renters moving in.

Ruha said the bill will have to be current and in the applicant’s name, noting that not having a current bill was a red flag that suggested the applicant might have skipped out on paying in another community.

Ruha said they also plan on collecting applicants’ email addresses, too, after speaking to a collections agency on Monday.

“They can be traced where they’re at when they skip, with an email address — and we have 179 renters who have done that,” Ruha said.

Ruha said her office wants to be able to contact the rental property’s owner after doing everything they can to make the renter pay and become current on their bill, and send a copy of the utility bill to them to show that they were seriously delinquent.

She said they wanted to add a note on the back of the application informing the applicant of their intention to take action against delinquent renters.

“Once they sign this, it is a contract with the city, so we shouldn’t be in any violation of privacy at all,” Ruha said.

Ruha said her office also feels deposits should be adjusted considerably and renters should pay more, as the city was losing money there and “big time” in businesses.

“I know we want businesses here, but we want businesses who are also good community people as well, not leaving us with bills of $10,000, $13,000, $8,000,” Ruha said. “This is ridiculous that we put up with this.”

Ruha said they also feel that their late fees, another item they wanted to address, have to be raised considerably.

“We talked about, definitely more than the 1.5%, like a flat, and then depending on the balance, it can be graduated up with what they owe,” Ruha said. “Some of these people are never current, never current.”

Ruha said she’s been speaking with several collection agencies, noting one in particular impressed her — between the conversation they had and their track record.

“(They) made very clear that again, starting with the application and jumping on delinquency within the first three months, you have a better chance of collecting this,” Ruha said. “We’re going to try to go back six years, because if you go back six years, we’re well, just under $500,000.”

Ruha said the city will get 65% of the agency’s collected payments, only costing $75 to sign up for, and the company has an online portal that city officials can tap into to see their activity.

She said Niles uses a similar program, submitting a little over $200,000 in a year and getting $14,000 back immediately.

“It definitely starts when they’re not complying with coming up to date, or not paying at all — they need to be shut off,” Ruha said. “They will come in and pay, they have to have utilities; that is our hook — simple as that.”

Hubbard City Service Director Ed Palestro said the city has a medical list of residents on some sort of device or with a physician’s excuse to avoid having their utilities reduced or shut off, but he wasn’t sure if it was current because of his time away from the city.

“Those aren’t the people that are delinquent, to be quite honest with you; it’s the renting network,” Palestro said. “I don’t think Mrs. Ruha or anybody is going to say ‘We’re going to be hardliners — that’s not what it’s about, but to run a consistent delinquent policy, we have to be consistent.”

Mayor Ben Kyle said they’ve seen a decline in the amount of interaction with the Trumbull County Assistance Program, which was a great way to help residents who fell behind in the winter months.

“All these different community organizations that we would actively work to try and get the money, as if they had children or whatever it is,” Kyle said. “But with the TCAP program, they would call Warren and have to wait two weeks for somebody to call them back, and then they would go through the process, and then they would lie to us.”

Kyle said the city would then spend an hour speaking with TCAP to find out if the resident reached out to them, noting that they would get some money, or TCAP would run out of it.

Kyle said the consistently delinquent individuals have “burned the bridges,” abusing the groups that wanted to help them.

“All the groups that want to help the kids out, fine, they’ll help you once, but the third time — come on,” Kyle said.

Kyle noted Niles made huge updates to their policies after COVID-19, adding that updating the city has to do for utilities “is a must.”

Ruha said she didn’t want people to think the billing office didn’t work with people who legitimately have a temporary problem.

“But when they’re habitual, and they do not comply with getting to where they need to be, we should not be running a welfare agency here,” Ruha said. “We should literally be saying, ‘Here’s a list of agencies you can call, but you have 14 days to become current.'”

Palestro said residents who get an extension have 30 days to pay the total balance, an aspect that was “critical” to run a good policy — reiterating consistency.

“I don’t want to say 100%, but Mrs. Ruha’s right, we’re not hardliners sitting over the building office,” Palestro said.

Palestro said he foresees things not getting better because everyone is in hard times, but city officials need to be proactive instead of reactive.

Regarding the city’s best chance of getting money back, the collection agency should be able to get 45% of whatever is owed if the person is three to four months past due, Ruha said.

“If you go to 150 days, 15% — you see why you cannot have the habituals continually going on,” Ruha said. “The longer they’re past due, the less money we’re going to have coming into us — seriously, that’s all there is to it — we’re going to wind up losing 100%.”