Lawton taking steps to collect unpaid debt

LAWTON – Lawton is stepping up its efforts to collect unpaid utility bills and municipal court fines.

The Lawton City Council approved a series of actions Tuesday aimed at bolstering the city’s ability to collect overdue payments from utility customers as well as people who either did not attend their court hearing or failed to pay their fines.

Those steps included:

* Approving a contract with the Texas-based law firm Purdue, Brandon, Fielder, Collins and Mott, which will oversee the city’s collection efforts.

* Authorizing the agency to collect a fee of up to 35% of the debt on bills referred for collection.

State law allows cities to hire a collection agency to collect outstanding debts and delinquent court costs, said Deputy City Attorney Keleah Fisher. The agency may charge a collection fee of up to 35% of the debt.

Hiring a collection agency should help the city reduce the amount of unpaid debt on its books, Fisher said.

“When we first began this project, we had, I believe, over $200,000 in outstanding unpaid utility bills,” she said. “And it’s estimated that municipal court had an estimated 11 million dollars in outstanding penalties and costs.”

Councilman Jay Burk said he thought the city already had a contract with a collection agency.

“We’ve always had a collection agency, and I didn’t know we’d gotten rid of them,” he said.

Utility Services Manager Mardi Repasy said the city had worked with a different collection agency in the past, but that agency’s owner had died of COVID-19 in the early days of the pandemic and his wife was unable to keep the company going.

“So we’ve basically been without an agency until we do something here,” she said.

Councilman Randy Warren said he was glad the city was moving forward with plans to collect unpaid debts.

“We need this because right now, we’re getting zero, and people owe us 11 million dollars,” he said. “Now, we’re not going to get 11 million, but we’re going to get something.”