WESTLOCK — The Town of Westlock is writing off its outstanding utility accounts receivable in the amount of $3,400 and will be removed from the 2022 Utility Accounts Receivable write-off recommendation list.
At the May 8 Town of Westlock regular council meeting, councillors voted unanimously 6-0 to write-off the accounts, (mayor Ralph Leriger was away). Director of finance Julia Seppola noted they set aside money yearly to allow for the “doubtful accounts” (for collection) as reported in the 2022 audited financial report and are uncollectable.
“In reviewing the utility receivables, it was found that about $3,400 needs to be cleaned-up off of the utility receivable,” said Seppola. “When they do these write-offs, because we’re actually removing them from the list, it doesn’t mean that we preclude ourselves from collecting these amounts.”
Write-offs for the utility receivable are for water, sewer, garbage monthly billings where all efforts have been exhausted and all accounts listed have been with collections for some time and are inactive.
Seppola said the town will “make every effort to collect the old accounts” adding there were no amounts found to be uncollectable at this time in general receivables and taxes were a different process altogether. “But the $3,400 is for utilities receivables that can be removed from the list.”
While councillors did not know who the accounts belong to, Seppola felt that it was important for them to be “aware that these are the ones that are going to be removed.” The accounts span about two years between 2020-2022 with one account in the list from March 2019.
“We collect approximately $300,000 a month in utilities, and this goes
all the way back to 2020 so we haven’t done too bad in being successful in our collections. It’s a fairly small amount,” said Seppola.
