DEMOREST — The City of Demorest continues to look at ways to save money while finding ways to more efficiently serve its residents and customers.
At Tuesday night's work session, Mayor Rick Austin and members of the city council discussed the possibility of contracting with an outside vendor to provide the city's monthly water billing.
City Manager Steve Lindsey told council members he has proposals from three or four companies, two of which were recommended because they work well with Taylor Software, the new software the city just began using.
City staff currently prints more than 6,000 water bills each month.
"There are some substantial cost savings if we can outsource the printing of the bills and the sending of the bills that we now do," Austin said. "We use card stock for our Demorest water bills and it takes an awful lot of effort to feed the machine and to keep ink in it and mail them."
The transition would take the city from spending about $1,500 per month on card stock for printing postcard-size bills to an outside company printing bills on letter-size paper that can include more information from the city.
There also are other advantages to the letter-size bills.
"It gives us an opportunity to put a snapshot of the six-month usage of water at the bottom of that bill, and also will give us an opportunity to be able to put messages on that bill as well," Austin said.
"At the end of the day, the most important thing is it, by our estimates, is going to save us north of $1,400 a month by outsourcing, so that's a substantial savings for us as a city and I'm extremely proud of the city staff for seeing that need and taking the initiative to go forward and find that cost savings for us," Austin said.
