Cd'A could give COVID break on water, sewer bills

Coeur d’Alene City Council is eyeing a program that would establish a lifeline for residents struggling to pay bills because of COVID-19.

Chelsea Nesbit, a community development specialist who helps facilitate the city’s Community Development Block Grant funds, will come to the city’s governing body tonight with a proposal to establish a City Utility Subsistence Payment program, which would essentially create a mechanism for low- and middle-income residents to request assistance for water and sewer bills.

Approximately 300 Coeur d’Alene residents are late paying their city utility bills, to the tune of roughly $46,000. If approved, the program would allow those low-to-middle-income residents whose livelihoods have been impacted by COVID to apply. Nesbit’s proposal will start with $10,000 from the CDBD’s coronavirus funds, after which the city could consider additional funding.

The city is likely to see additional funding for COVID relief as the months persist. The city has learned it is eligible to receive an additional $247,000 in federal CARES Act funding.

Roughly 41% of Coeur d’Alene’s residents live paycheck to paycheck, Nesbit wrote to the city. This ALICE population — which stands for Asset-Limited, Income-Constrained, Employed — was in part targeted by the proposal. Nesbit said this particular part of the population falls into a gray area that often leaves working families out of the loop.

"These are often the people who don’t qualify for other forms of assistance because they make too much money,” Nesbit wrote in her staff report, “but they are also struggling to make ends meet.”

While people with low-to-middle-incomes will be the targets of this program, those residents don’t necessarily have to see a reduction in work hours to demonstrate a need, Coeur d'Alene community planning director Hilary Anderson told The Press.

“If you have a senior on a fixed income,” Anderson said, “and he or she had to incur an unexpected expense — such as hospitalization or something that impacted them — that would qualify. So it’s not just a lack of income; so long as you can show that you’ve been financially impacted, and you fall into that low-to-middle-income category, you should apply.”

If approved, staff would send notification of the program to delinquent customers and share information on social media and through the 139-person CDBG stakeholder list. Staff would require self-certification of income and to provide additional documentation on income to ensure that they qualify.

Many expect the measure to pass tonight, including Coeur d'Alene City Councilman Dan Gookin.

“One of the first things I said in the beginning of the lockdown back in March is, 'Is there any way we could offer some forgiveness for some people?’” Gookin said. “I was told the city was going to be very considerate, that we (weren’t) going to shut people’s water off. It’s one of those things that, with the COVID bug, the government has a certain responsibility to its people, since they’re the ones that shut everybody down.”

The council meeting begins at 6 p.m. downstairs in the Coeur d'Alene Public Library Community Room.