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The City of Algood will begin work with Fox Collection Services to collect on unpaid accounts within the city.
City Manager Keith Morrison said the service allows Algood to keep rates low for current residents.
“We lose a little bit of money when people leave town and they have got more of an account than their deposit will cover. And so this way, if they leave town and don’t pay the bill,” Morrison said. “We have got somebody trying to get that money back to help reduce the cost to other rate-payers. So the other rate-payers have to absorb that lost money and that lost revenue. So this will help keep costs down.”
Algood will use Fox Collection Services for account collection.
Morrison said the utility accounts comprise just a small portion of missing funds.
“The other thing is like fines and penalties and tickets. That’s where probably our larger collection would be,” Morrison said. “Probably the last four years on utilities, we are probably looking at four to eight thousand dollars that we could collect. The last four years on fines and tickets is closer to $40,000.”
Algood will not see a loss in revenue by hiring Fox Collection Services.
“There is no fee to us. They collect 100 percent of our money and they collect their fee from the client,” Morrison said. “And then send us our fee, our money at a 100 percent. So there is no lost revenue for us. Anything we gain is just additional gains for us.”
The Algood City Council voted to use Fox Collection services instead of American Municipal Services (AMS) during the Tuesday meeting. Morrison said Fox Collection would work better for Algood.
“AMS does not have a local office. They would do the phone calls and try to collect on the money. They would have whoever owes the money come to the city and pay it,” Morrison said. “And then we would have to send [AMS] their fee. Fox, however, has a local office and they will make the collection. We won’t have to do anything.”
The City of Cookeville and Cookeville Regional Medical Center use Fox Collection Services as well.
Mayor Lisa Chapman-Fowler abstained from the vote because she is the local representative of Fox Collection Services. Chapman-Fowler noted during the meeting that she will not be the representative making the collections.
