Some Screven County residents were shocked by unusually high power bills because of the recent cold spell, prompting the City of Sylvania to offer customers more time to pay, interest-free.
The city is offering to let people pay their bills by 5 p.m. on Feb. 24 without penalty, instead of the usual due date of Feb. 10, said City Manager Carter Crawford. And if that extension won’t be long enough, people who come to City Hall by Feb. 20 and sign up for a payment extension can arrange to pay, without interest, over as long as three months.
Finance Director Stacy Mathis said most people who have asked for extra time so far have said they can catch up before three months.
“I think it’s the right thing to do,” to help residents struggling with the unusual cold, said Mayor Margaret Evans. The National Weather Service said Screven County had two weeks of nightly temperatures below freezing in January – the third-longest cold spell ever recorded in the area.
“We’ve had the coldest weather we’ve had in years,” Crawford said. “People’s bills are doubling and even higher.” Crawford said he can sympathize because the bill for his own, 2,000-square-foot house went from $186 last month to $742 this month. He said the highest he’d ever had before was $500.
“It hit everybody,” he said.
Depending on how many people pay their bills late, the city may have a cash-flow shortage and have to borrow money to make up the difference temporarily, Crawford said. Or the city may be able to delay payments to its electric and gas suppliers, but they charge interest.
Either way, “We’ve got to do it,” he said. “We’ve got to look after the citizens.”
Planters EMC and Georgia Power also try to work with customers who can’t pay their bills.
But Planters’ Member Services Manager Randy Hill said customers need to realize it costs more to heat a house in cold weather and they need to plan accordingly.
Hill said he has customers who say they don’t understand why their bills are so much higher when they’ve kept their thermostat at a constant temperature. He said they sometimes don’t realize that it takes much more electricity to maintain that same temperature when it’s cold outside.
Hill said customers should become accustomed to reading their power meters to see how many kilowatts they are using each day. And they should realize that even though they pay for electricity after they use it, when the power goes through the meter, they’ve bought it and they must pay for it.
“You can’t pull up to a gas station with $10 in your pocket and pump $20 worth,” he said. “You have to budget your energy costs.”
Planters offers average monthly billing to help people avoid large shocks in particularly cold weather.
Some people get high bills because an underground hot water pipe breaks and they’re paying to heat wasted water without realizing it. He said people who have unusually high bills should call and ask for more information. Planters automatically reads meters daily and can tell customers if they’ve had a sudden spike that doesn’t coincide with cold weather, sometimes helping point out that there may be an underground leak.
Hill said customers who are having trouble paying their bills should call as early as possible to try to work out a payment plan. Different Planters’ customers have different due dates, rather than everyone having the same due date of the 10th of the month as in Sylvania.
“We try to work with people when we can,” Hill said. “A lot of people have lost jobs, but they’re going to have another high bill the next month.”
Planters serves most of the residents of Screven County who are not served by the City of Sylvania’s electric service. Georgia Power has about 400 residential customers in Screven County, in the Newington area.
Customers who are going to have trouble paying their bills should call Georgia Power as soon as possible to try to work out a payment plan, said Konswello Monroe, spokeswoman for the company in Atlanta. She said arrangements are made on a “case-by-case basis.”