Long Beach utilities will start shutting off gas service for customers behind on payments for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic.
For residential accounts more than $800 behind in payments, gas shutoffs started Sunday, according to a city memo from city Director of Financial Management Kevin Riper. Before the pandemic, the shutoff threshold for any delinquent account was $50.
The change follows the reinstatement of a policy in August 2023 that shut off water with an $800 balance more than 60 days late.
In Long Beach, the total amount of residential gas bills unpaid for more than 120 days equaled more than $6.4 million, according to the memo.
Still, unpaid utility bills are a relatively small share of the city’s revenues.
The total amount of late due payments for gas, water, refuse and sewer — $13.6 million—represents 3.7% of all fee revenue collected by the city last year, the memo said.
Resumption of late fees has been delayed as late as March 2025, as the department focuses only on resuming collections this fall, according to the memo.
The city will also start taking legal action to collect late payments, but any debt more than two years old is likely to be written off, Riper wrote. Debts older than three years are not collectible under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power ended its COVID shutoff moratorium and resumed collections on late payments in March 2022, two years after it began.