Hamlet wants residents to pay bills
Darrell Greer
Northern News Services
Rankin Inlet (Feb 14/01) - The hamlet of Rankin Inlet is owed thousands of dollars in water, garbage, and land leases and wants people to pay up.
Hamlet senior administrative officer Ron Roach says about $183,000 is owed to the hamlet in water and garbage fees and $133,000 owed in land leases.
Rankin reduced its general-operation deficit to $126,000 from $612,000 in April 2000. Roach says general operations would actually be about $190,000 in the black if leases were paid. A special council meeting was held last week to explore options to collect the owed revenues.
Letters have been sent to those in arrears that the money is due.
The hamlet's will then send registered letters to ensure everyone has received their notice. After that, one of three options will be undertaken.
"We can sell the debt to a collection agency where we get a percentage up front and the agency goes after the money owed to the hamlet. We could take the individuals directly to court, or we could go with the third option and pay to publish the names of those owing money in our newspaper," says Roach.
"Whatever we choose, the registered letters will prevent anyone from coming back to us and saying they didn't know they owed."
Roach says the entire hamlet suffers because of the people who aren't paying their bills. He adds services would increase if the monies owed were collected.
"We'd possibly have two garbage trucks on the road instead of one, we'd be able to better maintain our dump, fix up the fence and make our town cleaner. People have to realize hamlet services aren't free and their bills have to be paid in order for us to operate effectively."
On the plus side, Rankin Inlet has received its first increase in hamlet funding in four years.
The Department of Community Government and Transportation recently awarded the hamlet $85,000. All Nunavut communities are awarded funding based on their previous budget.
"$60,000 of Rankin's allotment goes towards general operations, which the hamlet chooses how to spend, while $25,000 is for the power and fuel subsidy," says Roach.
