EDITORIAL: Land pens open letter to Mayor & Council regarding power costs on bills

Jasper City Councilman Anderson Land has released an open letter to the Mayor and Councilmembers regarding his desire to have power costs be placed on City of Jasper electric bills:

Mayor and Fellow City Councilmembers,

Earlier this month I asked the City Manager Denise Kelly about changing the structure of the billing on the utility bills for the City of jasper to show the rates for these charges on the bills. The response I got was, per Mary Davis the Customer Service Director, Caselle (I’m assuming is the company the city uses to do our software billing program) said they could not put power cost on the bill because of no software or programming space.

If this software company Caselle cannot provide this service I would like to ask the council to approve the City Manager to do a search for a software companies who can provide this service and put it out for bid. Currently the utility bills for the city of Jasper only show the service description, service dates from and to, previous reading and present reading, usage and the charge for the service. It does not however show the rate for the charge of the electric, and water. The other items on the utility bill are a flat rate, electric base, sewer refuse, and security light (if you have one). I believe the utility customers deserve the right to know from month to month what utility rate they are being charged and it should be on the bill.

I would also like to ask council to request that the City Manager also show the City Council how the SRMPA refunds are being figured into the cost to help reduce the cost to the utility customers of Jasper in accordance with the proposition passed in this past May 7, 2022 election. Residents have been asking about this and they need to know.

Also Mayor and Council, I'm sure it is no secret that the Current City Manager Denise Kelly has said she has plans to retire this coming December 2022. I would think we should start thinking about her replacement and how we are going fill that position. I personally think we should keep the position the way is it currently being held as City Manager/City Finance Director the two positions definitely need to be separated. We need to diligently search for a successor and one who is not a current employee who is friends or family with the current staff. I really think we should be looking outside the city for someone who is not friends with everybody or the family member of any current employees, because I would think that would make it difficult to maintain discipline and to enforce disciplinary actions when needed. Thank you, I look forward to hearing from each of you soon and the above matters.

Anderson M. Land, Jr.

City Of Jasper City Council Member District 1