Landlord liability removed from Summerside collection policy

The City of Summerside is ready to drop a plan to hold landlords responsible for water and electricity bills left unpaid by their tenants.

• Summerside council considers making landlords pay unpaid tenants electric bills

• Summerside goes after $1.3M in utility arrears

The city is putting together a new policy for collecting late utility bills. The plan is to have a consistent policy in place that will lay out procedures for collection up to, and including, disconnection.

An early version of the new policy suggested landlords might ultimately be held responsible for the unpaid bills of their tenants, but that has been dropped from the final draft of the policy.

City finance director Rob Philpott said the city will instead try to work with landlords to collect arrears.

"Hopefully the city and that landlord can work together to try to bring some collective pressure to bear on that tenant to be able to bring their account up to date," said Philpott.

The final draft of the policy will be presented to council next week.

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