Coaldale expands use of collections agency

Coaldale Borough Council is expanding the use of a collections agency for unpaid bills.

On Tuesday, council voted to authorize Portnoff Law Associates of King of Prussia to collect unpaid sewer maintenance fees. The same firm has been collecting unpaid garbage bills from residents and property owners for about a year. Over that time, they’ve collected $28,000 in unpaid bills.

The borough has given Portnoff the power to add its own fees onto a person’s existing debt to the borough in order to get the original principal paid. In at least one case, it’s resulted in a property being sold at sheriff sale, council President Angela Krapf said.

“It’s a win-win for us. They’re very aggressive. We had one house for sanitation that they did a sheriff sale on. They’re serious. That’s more than we were able to do,” Krapf said.

The borough still has more than $90,000 in unpaid trash bills, but council members said they are pleased with the progress Portnoff has made.

Portnoff also does collections work on behalf of Panther Valley School District.

The unpaid sewer transmission fees are not as large as the trash bills, but they are still in the tens of thousands of dollars. Krapf said the borough has failed to collect at total of $26,000 in fees from residents and property owners in the borough.

“That’s about 1/3 of our income from that. That’s pretty pathetic,” councilwoman Claire Remington said.

In other business

Council agreed to:

• Advertise their former recycling truck for sale, with a minimum bid of $15,000. Remington said the truck has value, but the borough no longer uses it for recycling.

• Appoint Systems Design and Engineering to conduct rental inspections. The firm will also do some code enforcement work in the borough.

• Authorize the police department to purchase a computer server.