Sherman residents who pay their water, sewer and trash bills with a credit card would stop paying a processing fee on those payments under an ordinance the City Council takes up Monday.
Ordinance No. 6975 is set for a public hearing and a possible vote at the council's Nov. 2 meeting, which starts at 5 p.m. at City Hall, 220 W. Mulberry St. The agenda and packet were posted Tuesday.
What would change
According to a staff report from Chief Financial Officer Mary Lawrence, the ordinance "eliminates the reimbursement fee charged to customers for utility payments made by credit card," while still letting the city recover processing costs on other kinds of payments it takes.
The ordinance gives the city manager or a designee authority to accept cards and other electronic payments for all city fees, fines, court costs and other charges, and to set a processing fee that is "reasonably related" to what the city pays to process them.
That fee would be added at the point of sale, except on payments for municipal water, sanitary sewer and solid waste service.
It also sets a service charge for a card or electronic payment that the card company or bank does not honor, equal to the charge the city already applies to a check returned for insufficient funds.
The packet does not say how much the current utility card fee is, and it does not list the processing fees that would apply to other payments.
