City of Durango Begins Using Lockbox for Utility Payments

Durango, CO –   A new return address will grace your City of Durango utility bill this month. The City of Durango has switched to a lockbox system for processing its utility payments.  The service is provided by the City’s local bank, Bank of Colorado, however the bills will be processed by the Bank of Colorado’s lockbox division in Gretna, Nebraska. The Bank of Colorado has been manually processing the City’s utility bills for years. In the past the payments were batched by the bank and then the payments stubs were then sent to City Hall to be manually entered one at a time. The change will allow the City to process the payments in an electronic manner which will increase efficiency and cut down on great deal of staff time. An increase in accuracy is also a positive byproduct of the change. The service comes at no additional monthly cost to the City of Durango.
“We’ve been toying with this idea for years, but with the current budget constraints and loss of a position to the Accounting Division we had to start looking at ways to drastically increase our efficiency”, commented Julie Brown, Director of Finance. “We foresee no delay in the posting of payments due to the Gretna, Nebraska location. Once the payment is received by the processor, it will be posted to the utility account the next day. With the way we have been handling the processing, the posting of payments took 3-5 days due to the manual nature of the process.”
Payments will still be accepted on a walk up basis at City Hall, 949 E. 2nd Ave during business hours of 7:30 AM to 4:30 PM or in the drop off box located in the front of City Hall.  Residents are also encouraged to pay their utility bill online, by phone or have the payment automatically deducted from their checking or savings account each month which will negate the need for a payment stub to be sent in.