City saves $23,000 on utility bills
By JIMMY GALVAN Managing Editor
While many in the city of Jasper complained over this month's late utility bills, Jasper City Manager Alan Grindstaff said the new provider being used for the printing and mailing of utility bills is saving the city more than $23,000 annually.

Grindstaff said the city went with The Data Center out of Salt Lake City, Utah more than a year ago after placing the program out for bids. Grindstaff provided documentation showing The Data Center lowest bid that came in for the job and city counc i l approved going with the company.

"When you can save $23,000 a year, you have to look into doing this," Grindstaff said. "And these businesses can do it quickly and more professionally. The Data Center does this for many cities and counties and because of that, they get better postal rates than we can get."

Grindstaff said the latearriving December utility bills is not the fault of The Data Center as it blame falls more with the U.S. Postal Service.

"If you look at the postmark on the bills, most are stamped Nov. 30 and normally the postal service processes it that day," Grindstaff said. "When we called the post office and asked them what was going on, they told us that priority and express mail comes first and first-class mail comes after that. I thought that was real sweet of you guys. So basically, the postal service messed this up this month."

But Grindstaff said The Data Center didn't escape the wrath of the city either for this month's late utility bills.

"They may not have had any fault in this process but we still got after them," Grindstaff said. "We can't have this type of situation. This is unacceptable but this is the first major issue that we have had with them."

Previously, the city of Jasper paid a monthly cost of $4,347 a month to send out the utility bills. Using The Data Center, the city now pays $2,419 a month.

"We have to pay more postal fees plus have the equipment to do it," Grindstaff said. "The Data Center already has the equipment and they just ship it out."

Grindstaff said the savings to the city is passed on to the ratepayers for this service.

"If we can save some money, we will do it," Grindstaff said. "And it benefits the rate payers in the end."