New Fees For Defiance Water Services

It’s finally offi­cial. After a lot of talk about it, Defi­ance City Coun­cil this week, finally approved a rec­om­men­da­tion to increase util­ity deposits and recon­nect fees on rental prop­er­ties. The move resulted from City offi­cials attempts to get uncol­lected funds for water and sewer ser­vice on rental prop­er­ties.

Sev­eral rec­om­men­da­tions were made, which coun­cil approved, includ­ing rais­ing the cur­rent deposit on rental units from $75 to $200 for those renters inside city lim­its and $300 for those out­side the city lim­its, and rais­ing the recon­nec­tion fee from $20 to $75.

The old fees didn’t even cover costs involved.

The new reg­u­la­tions are designed to place more of a bur­den on the ten­ant who uses the ser­vices rather than pass it on to the land­lord.

The city util­i­ties office will try the new fee sched­ule and report back in six months to see how it affected the delin­quency rate.