The Palm Coast City Council agreed to scrap plans to charge residents and businesses bank or digital check fees–the ACH autopay system, or ACH debit–when making electronic payments for utility bills and other city-related costs. But the transaction fee applying to credit or debit card transactions will remain.
The city last month announced that it would no longer absorb transaction fees–that all such fees would be included on residents’ and businesses’ bills starting June 1. The City Council had agreed to the shift at a meeting in February. When the council discussed it at the time, the city administration said the city had absorbed $728,000 in fees the previous year. The council would pass those on to residents.
The public responded unhappily.
“A lot of residents utilize ACH and E-check kind of auto pay systems, and so there’s been a ton of feedback,” Council member Ty Miller said, “I think mostly some emails, phone calls, but also a lot of social media about that,” meaning ACH and E-checks. “That’s a primary method of payment that most people are concerned with, and they don’t believe that they should be charged that fee. The difficulty is, because of a third party payment system. They charge that fee. Other places don’t necessarily do that.”
The council doesn’t want to discourage residents’ paperless payments. It directed the administration to at least examine the possibility of not charging residents who pay bills automatically through their bank. (Those who pay by paper check still face no fees. Certain banks offer Bill Pay, most of which eliminate fees. The city would not charge a fee on those transactions, either.)
Interim City Manager Lauren Johnston reported to the council that the city receives about 40 percent of its collections through autopay. Those transactions carry fees totaling $18,000 a month, or $200,000 a year. Of that, $30,000 are ACH fees, for e-checks. (ACH is the acronym for the Automated Clearing House, the network that enables electronic transfers between bank accounts.) These fees are charged for billing out of the utility, solid waste and stormwater departments. All three charges appear in the single, monthly utility bill.
“I think that $200,000 is kind of our trade-off rate,” Miller said. “Instead of going the full $700,000, which is what we had coming in June, we could look at kind of these ones that are the normal avenue for most people to pay. And if we could allow those without a fee, that would make life easier on the residents.” But he was willing to also scrap just the ACH-Autopay fee, if it incentivized people to move to that form of payment.
That’s what the council agreed to do at a meeting last week, absorbing the cost of $30,000 in fees a year.
PB says
Too late, mail me a bill!
Jimbo says
This funny, they dont do anything right. They came with the idea to charge the fees to the resident and now Ty Miller, because residents call him and he saw the complaints in Social media he think is not correct to charges the fees for check or e-checks. That tell me that he doesnt know anything about numbers. We can spend $68,1000 in 3 months for a person that will do nothing, but the city cannot pay the fees, but like Pontieri will say ” that money is in the budget” another one that doesnt know anything about what she is doing. They dont even say that they will talk with the company they are using for the electronic payment to know if they can waive the fees or use a different company for electronic payment.
Robjr says
The auto pay check fee has always been calculated into the water/sewer rate.
City staff told them so.
The city was attempting to charge the citizens twice.
I changed my billing to hard copy and will use my bank’s
bill pay feature. Now the city can allocate resources to process
my invoice payment by hand.
There are times when these town councilors are about as
useful as screen doors on submarines.
Anonymous says
I paid my bill today using my debit card and was not charged the fee. However, they raided their late fee from $5.00 to a $10 late fee which I was unaware of until today.
Skibum says
You already let the horse out of the barn, Palm Coast. Now your folks are furiously running after it, trying to minimize the damage that YOU are responsible for causing because you acted first and only decided to think about what you were doing afterward! I think you’ll have to wallow in the muddy mess your too hasty decisions have caused.
You either want PC residents to utilize electronic payment options and E-notices of billing statements in order to save city employees from having to manually take and process those payment checks, or people like me are just going to throw up our hands, tell you to MAIL out the utility bill statements so we can pay however we want… and screw your supposed worries about the amount of money the private company that YOU picked to process electronic payments is charging you for their service. YOU made that choice, not any of us. The company that processes electronic payments is a benefit to YOU, Palm Coast, so you don’t have to have your staff spend all that time processing manual payments, yet you want to charge US when the service you picked is not any significant benefit to us, but it is to YOU. Your choice… I’m perfectly fine with the decision I made to go back to having the city MAIL my bills to me, and if I want to add to your staff’s workload because they have to handle an increased amount of manual payments due to boneheaded decisions that were made with little or no thought or input from the public, so be it.
Dennis C Rathsam says
This city sucks!!!!!! Next thell want to charge us for the P/C AIR
Cindy Jameson says
Seems like an old dusty desk calculator was taken out of the closet and someone decided to do the math and found it to cost the city MORE money to send out monthly bills. You just can’t make this stuff up! I have an idea. Why don’t the city counsel cut their salaries back to what it was prior to our previous mayor. That should save a whole lot of money with some left over to pay other fees we can’t afford. You see most of us have only one income coming in while others have two or three coming in which allows them to afford all the fees like the utility fee they want the residents to pay. I’m trying to be respectful of employees salaries so I hope I’m making my point.
Jay Tomm says
This is a perfect example if what is wrong with palm coast gov….LOL
Billy says
Don’t worry! They will raise the price of water again to cover their fees!
Robjr says
May 16, 2025 | FlaglerLive
…..In other words, the current rates reflect the cost of the transaction fees, but now that the city will no longer bear that cost, it will, in effect, realize an additional windfall.
When the city announced that they would charge a fee for online payments I canceled my online payment and requested a paper bill. I am now processing my payment via my bank and they send it to the city at no charge to me. Now the city will expend labor for processing a paper bill in and to process a paper transaction. And I am not going back to online payment.
These elected officials attempt to tax the citizens in any manner that they can.
Steve says
At least I know what I get here where I live now. FPC is a never ending roller coaster of ineptitude.
Good Luck
Penny for your thoughts says
Lucky for you guys I didn’t order the pennies at my bank! But, I have signed up for paper bills and removed autopay from my account. I have no plans to change that! It’s a one-time fee of $14.54 to restore billing on my account as it used to be.
This fee covers all reimbursement for my WASTED time.
Bo Peep says
It’s okay we can pay by paper check instead for free. It won’t be as easy for you but that was your decision.
Me says
When will the taxpayers od the City of PC have competent city officials that know what they are doing? It is almost becoming comical if not pretty pathetic to say the least.
We’re stuck with a mayor that is off the charts on being capable to be mayor of anything let alone the size of Palm Coast.
We should get a break in our property taxes just having to deal with their incompetency.