Grand Coulee was $250k behind in billing Electric City

Since 2011, Grand Coulee hasn’t billed Electric City for its share of the cost of operating and maintaining the wastewater treatment plant the two cities jointly own.

Grand Coulee City Clerk Carol Boyce acknowledged Tuesday that the billings haven’t been made since 2011, and that she estimates the total billing to bring the account up to date will be about $240,000.

Electric City Clerk Jackie Perman said the annual billings for the wastewater treatment account ranges from $70,000-80,000 a year.

Electric City owns 37 percent of the plant, which is located in Grand Coulee, and pays that amount of the total operation and maintenance costs.

Boyce said Tuesday that she is accumulating invoices in an effort to make the billing to Electric City.

The issue came up at a recent Electric City Council meeting when Perman told the council that her city had just paid Grand Coulee $14,022.45, for an outdated police dispatching bill. Electric City’s part of the bill from the Multiple Area Communications Center in Moses Lake was 28 percent of the total, coming to just over $45,000. Electric City pays Grand Coulee for its share of dispatch calls coming out of Grant County.

Perman told the council that the city’s check for the bill paid the city up to date from 2011 to the present.

She responded to a suggestion that maybe the statute of limitations would protect Electric City from part of the bill, saying, “What’s right is right.” She said Electric City owed that amount and she paid it.

It isn’t the first time that Grand Coulee has come up short in its billings.

Back in 2009, the city hadn’t made ambulance billings and court billings for several years, losing what has been estimated at over $100,000. Since that time both the ambulance and court billings have been up to date.

The city hired a third-party billing service to catch up with the ambulance billings and hired a part-time person to make the court billings.

Boyce was not city clerk at the time.