BELLVILLE CITY COUNCIL ADDING FEES FOR CREDIT CARD, WEB PAYMENTS
Bellville will now charge an additional $5 to citizens making payments to the city via credit card or the internet.
The city says it is making these changes in order to recover losses from assessed processing fees. The $5 charge will be added to each transaction, and is expected to begin with the next billing cycle.
Other options were presented by Chief Financial Officer Cathy Ezell at a recent city council meeting. These included charging a payment to citizens equating to 2 or 3 percent of their total bill for the month.
Ezell says the city pays $39,000 in processing fees for the current fiscal year, which includes web and credit card payment fees. She also says that over 30 percent of the roughly 2,500 bills sent out are paid for with credit cards or online payments.
According to Ezell, every city she has worked for in the past has employed a system similar to the one approved in Bellville, in order to offset processing costs without passing along said costs to every customer.
A few years ago, Sealy paid $35,000 for a credit card machine that adds 7.5% to the bill if the machine is used. Same goes for credit card or debit card payments. We are also facing large increases in our utility bills.