Budget Billing Program

The City of Colby Utility Department offers a budget billing for residential utility bills. Residents must have services for at least 12 months before they can sign a request form to be on the Budget Billing. This program sets a bill amount for 12 months based on the previous 12 months usage. In the month of March each year the previous 12 months utility bills are re-evaluated and the April bill is set to the new amount for the next 12 months. 

Once enrolled in the program, each month on the utility bill there is an adjustment made to/from an excess account to be able to set the amount due for services used on the bill to the amount designated for the budget amount. If the amount listed on the Reserve line on the bill is negative, the amount of services used/billed is higher than the set budget billing amount. This means you are using more than your previous year's average use and the budget billing amount is not keeping up with your current usage. This will affect the amount of your next budget billing evaluation. If the amount listed on the Reserve line is positive, your budget billing amount is larger than the current services being used. 

Courtesy letters/emails are sent in March if there is a large increase or decrease in your projected budget billing amount for the next year. 

When you close the utility account enrolled in the budget billing program, the reserve account is applied to the final bill. If the reserve amount is positive, that amount will be credited towards the final bill. If the the reserve amount is negative, that amount will be added to the final billed services amount and will be due. Finals bills are due upon receipt and must be paid within 90 days to avoid being sent to collections. 

For questions regarding this program, contact the Utility Billing Office at 785-460-4400.

Click Here to download the request form. 

Example:

Carl Smith has a residential account that has a 12-month utility bill average of $157.63. In those twelve months, his highest bill was $218.93 and his lowest bill was $124.34. He signs up for budget billing and the system applies $158 as his budget billing amount.

The utility bill is actually $133.28 for electric, water, sewer and trash services used in the billing period.

The budget billing adjustment for this bill is $24.72 to make the total amount due $158.

On the next utility bill next month, the Reserve account will show a balance of $149.76.