Borough Residents to Enjoy Online Bill Pay this Summer

This summer Emmaus residents will be able to pay for borough services such as water and sewer and garbage collection through online bill pay, according to the borough manager. That is, if an ongoing upgrade to the computer system in Borough Hall stays on track.

Craig Neely says that the new computer hardware has already been installed and the borough is now in the process of replacing its financial administration software. After that, six borough staffers need to be trained on the new system.

“We’ll be able to import all of the data from our MS-DOS-based system into the new Windows system,” he says.

The borough is targeting July 1, 2011 for the start of online bill pay. 

Once the new system is up and running, Neely says, the borough will credit every residential water customer in the borough with $5.64, the amount each customer was overcharged in 2010 fees by PennVest, the firm that collects the borough’s water fees. “Our current MS-DOS system doesn’t allow us to do that,” he says. 

Residents who have already received the refund will not see the credit on their account statements, he says.