We here at CAP CITY got all a-flutter recently when we received a letter from City Water, Light and Power: Pay up or we’ll pull the plug in two weeks. The notice was dated six days after our regular bill arrived, giving us a later due date – we confess to being a month behind, which we confess has happened before. We couldn’t get the check in the mail fast enough, and we weren’t the only ones to get pink paper from CWLP, whose leader, Doug Brown, told the city council on Tuesday that the utility, which stopped disconnections last spring, when the pandemic began, has started reminding folks that neither electricity nor water are free, using robocalls and letters to get the message across. “That way, we can get customers to understand: This doesn’t last forever,” Brown told council members. Some folks who haven’t paid haven’t called to make arrangements, he said. In mid-August, Brown said, 12,000 accounts were past due with a total owing of almost $10 million. It turns out that CWLP was just funning us when they threatened to turn off our juice this week: The utility, Brown told the council, won’t disconnect people at least through September. But folks in arrears need to contact the utility and set up payment plans. Typically, he said, such payment plans last six months, but they can extend longer. “As long as they share with us what their hardship is, we’ve been going out a year, if we need to,” Brown said. Fair enough. Just put us on the Bruce Rauner Payment Plan, the one with no hard deadlines that CWLP gave the state during the famous budget impasse.
This article appears in Fall Home & Garden 2020.
