I am writing to express my disappointment in the recent city decision to shift billing for refuse collection from city utility bills to North Valley Refuse billing directly.

While I have no doubt the city has the admirable goal of streamlining their billing procedures, it would appear to be doing so at the expense of greater burden on the residents and taxpayers of Whitefish. The effort required of all the residents to individually pay and manage another utility account is collectively higher, probably significantly so, than what would be required to have all the billing centralized through the city even if it takes additional resources at the city to manage it.

At a minimum, there are now tens of thousands of additional paper bills that are printed and mailed every year which does not seem like an efficient use of resources. Additionally, North Valley Refuse is unable to bill tenants (only property owners) because of “system limitations,” so if tenants have been paying utilities in their name for years the bills now go to the landlord, which creates additional paperwork hassle for the landlords and tenants of Whitefish. One of the main purposes of having a city government is to pool resources so the residents can accomplish more together than they can individually, and this seems to be a step in the opposite direction.

— Ben Davis, Whitefish