County Supports Library Hiring Bill Collection Agency

Officials of the Highlands County Library System went to the county commission Tuesday to get approval to hire a bill collection agency to go after unpaid fees and fines.

They not only got unanimous approval from the five county commissioners, but also received praise for tackling a substantial problem that plagues many library systems in Florida.

Also, Commissioner Don Bates gave Mary Myers, library system director, an idea that she might add to getting a collection agency to go after bad debts.

Bates suggested an "amnesty" period before the bill collectors are turned loose. If the library offers that for a limited time, people with fines and charges to replace materials could have their charges wiped out or reduced.

"How about an amnesty period?" Bates asked Myers shortly before he and the other commissioners voted to approve hiring a bill collection agency for the library system.

"Amnesty is kind of an interesting idea," Myers answered. She also said offering amnesty is "simple to do" and that she has "no problem with it."

Whether amnesty will be offered is up to library officials.

Library officials also will decide when to put Unique Management Services on the job of hunting down people who owe big fines or fees. The agency will track down people who have library materials more than 50 days overdue or who should buy new copies of the materials they borrowed because those materials are more than 60 days overdue.

If library debtors are found and refuse to pay off their debt entirely, Unique Management Services will report them to credit bureaus. In a story in Highlands Today Sunday, Myers said getting a bad debt report on a credit report could stop people from getting a loan to buy a car or a house "because they owe the library, say, $50."

Myers said she received many extremely favorable comments from citizens after the newspaper story about hiring a collection agency came out. With so much of what she called "good press" about hiring a bill collector, Myers said, more good will may be generated by offering an amnesty period before the bill collectors go into action.

Myers said the collection process will start soon, possibly this week. She will announce the day when Unique Management Services gets its first list of debtors to track down and deal with.

In discussions of how soon the bill collectors should start going after library debtors, Myers said she was considering delaying it until the other four county library systems in the Heartland Library Cooperative agree to use the same debt collection company.

"I'd like to see this move forward tomorrow," said Edgar Stokes, chairman of the five-member board of county commissioners. Stokes said there is no good reason why the county should delay turning the collection agency loose until the other four counties in the cooperative - Okeechobee, Glades, DeSoto and Hardee - come on board.

Unique Management Services will only get paid when it gets a debtor to pay up, and its fee will be limited to the $8.95 fee that it charges the each person whom the company makes pay off their library debt.

The company does only collections for library debts and it has more than 400 library systems as clients across the country, Myers said.

Myers said the company will not go after the hundreds of people who collectively owe more than $217,000 in unpaid fines and fees, because many of those debts are several years old. The oldest such case is 12 years old, she told commissioners.

"Our biggest problem," Myers said, referring to the library's poor record in getting debtors to pay up, "is that people give us false addresses or old addresses."

For every debt or fine that reaches 50 days old, she said, the library sends out a letter to the debtor, using the address which that person gave to get his or her library card.

"We have hundreds and thousands of letters we send that are returned to us, because of bad addresses," she said.

Because library workers are not trained as bill collectors, and because of the bad-address problem, the library's success rate in collecting debts is about 10 percent, Myers said to answer a question from Bates.

The most important benefit of having an effective bill collector will be getting people to return items they borrowed and forgot to bring back, Myers said. Collecting money owed is important, she said, but not as important as getting back the materials that county taxpayers paid for and should be able to use.

As just one example of the problem, Myers told the commissioners, one Avon Park resident currently owes the library $626 in unpaid fines and fees.