Members of the Provo City Council,
As currently stated in Schedule No. 6 of the Consolidated Fee Schedule of the Provo City Code (https://provo.municipal.codes/Code/FS_Utilities_Energy), the current fee charged to residential customers for connecting power to their residence is $20.00.
As a matter of general principle, it seems that fees collected by governmental agencies should be proportional to the cost to the agency for performing the service. The "Connect/Processing Fee" seems to violate this principle.
Provo Power has the ability to provide me with instantaneous usage data from my meter. These meters are connected through the fiber optic network and in most cases do not require a city employee to be physically present at the meter in order to read the meter. Additionally, most "connections" are simply a transfer of responsibility for payment from one party to another. The power is never disconnected and subsequently reconnected. This, again, does not require a city employee to come to the property. Rather, in most cases, this is a change of who to send the bill in the Provo Power database. Database changes are inexpensive to do and most are able to be automated, eliminating the need for an employee to do anything except monitor the database.
Given these facts, it seems that the actual cost to Provo Power for changing a name in a database should be much less than $20 and really just reflect the minimal amount of time an entry-level worker spends to make the update in the system. Something on the order of $5 or less seems to make sense.
For these reasons, I ask you to amend the Schedule No. 6 to charge $20.00 when a physical connection of power is required, and only charge $5.00 to process a change of payer when no physical connection is required.
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Members of the Provo City Council,
As currently stated in Schedule No. 6 of the Consolidated Fee Schedule of the Provo City Code (https://provo.municipal.codes/Code/FS_Utilities_Energy), the current fee charged to residential customers for connecting power to their residence is $20.00.
As a matter of general principle, it seems that fees collected by governmental agencies should be proportional to the cost to the agency for performing the service. The "Connect/Processing Fee" seems to violate this principle.
Provo Power has the ability to provide me with instantaneous usage data from my meter. These meters are connected through the fiber optic network and in most cases do not require a city employee to be physically present at the meter in order to read the meter. Additionally, most "connections" are simply a transfer of responsibility for payment from one party to another. The power is never disconnected and subsequently reconnected. This, again, does not require a city employee to come to the property. Rather, in most cases, this is a change of who to send the bill in the Provo Power database. Database changes are inexpensive to do and most are able to be automated, eliminating the need for an employee to do anything except monitor the database.
Given these facts, it seems that the actual cost to Provo Power for changing a name in a database should be much less than $20 and really just reflect the minimal amount of time an entry-level worker spends to make the update in the system. Something on the order of $5 or less seems to make sense.
For these reasons, I ask you to amend the Schedule No. 6 to charge $20.00 when a physical connection of power is required, and only charge $5.00 to process a change of payer when no physical connection is required.