Beginning March 1, Carlisle borough residents will once again face late penalties or water service termination for delinquent utility bills after a two-year moratorium.
The borough issued the temporary moratorium in March 2020 to address the impact of COVID-19 in the community and ensure that borough residents had the means to practice hygiene and limit the virus's spread.
"It was one of many strategies that we put into place ... at the onset of COVID," Borough Manager Susan Armstrong said.
The borough announced Wednesday in a news release that the moratorium will be lifted March 1. Starting then, the borough will resume its assessments of late penalties for bills that are outstanding 45 days after they are due and the water service termination process for accounts that remain delinquent 72 days from the bill date.
“With the moratorium, we didn’t really have any of that in place," said Richard Juday, the borough's finance director. "Customers were no longer having an incentive to pay timely because they weren’t going to be penalized."
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Juday said the borough has seen an increase in the number of past due accounts, at times even twice the usual amount, since the moratorium was established. He believes that will change when the moratorium is lifted.
"My anticipation is that we’ll see a lot of people who weren’t paying pay in general unless they are struggling financially," Juday said. "I think the people who saw that there was no incentive to pay timely, now they have the incentive. So we’re going to see a lot of people coming out who are either going to make payment and be made whole or realize that now is the time that they could be seeking assistance."
According to the borough, water services that are terminated as a result of nonpayment will not be reconnected until the payment has been made. The borough offers an option on its website for residents to make utility payments online. Juday said that utilities in the borough include water usage, sewer usage and a stormwater fee.
The borough said that residents who remain unable to bring their account to good standing prior to the date that the moratorium is lifted, and any resident with past-due utility bills, should call the borough's Finance Department at (717)249-4422. This allows them to discuss flexible payment options and assistance programs to prevent termination of their water service.
Homeowners and renters in the borough who may struggle to pay their utility bills have options.
One option is the Homeowner Public Utility Assistance Program. This program is designed to aid low-to-moderate income homeowners who have been affected by COVID-19 with up to three months of public utility assistance. Applications are available at Borough Hall at 53 W. South St. and the Stuart Community Center at 415 Franklin St. in Carlisle. Applications are also available online at www.carlislepa.org/utilityhelp, and questions should be directed to Mary Kuna at the Cumberland County Housing and Redevelopment Authority at (717)249-0789 or mkuna@cchra.com.
Another option is the Cumberland County Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which helps low-to-moderate income renters who have faced hardships because of COVID-19. The program allows renters to apply for rent or utility assistance for a maximum of 18 months. Applications can be found at the Housing and Redevelopment office at 114 N. Hanover St. in Carlisle or online at www.cchra.com.
“I think we chose now to lift the moratorium because what we were trying to do was make sure we had a strategy in place for home owners and renters who were struggling financially to seek some relief," Juday said. "So now we have these two programs in place that [when] we lift the program, if they are struggling financially there’s options for them.
"We didn’t want to lift it and then not have a solution for people.”
Maddie Seiler is a news reporter for The Sentinel and cumberlink.com covering Carlisle and Newville. You can contact her at mseiler@cumberlink.com and follow her on Twitter at: @SeilerMadalyn
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