Officials in Campbell negotiate over AT&T bill

June 7, 2012 at 12:05a.m.

By JEANNE STARMACK

campbell

Campbell administrators still are negotiating over an AT&T phone bill, but at least they can negotiate with the company instead of its collection firm, said Law Director Brian Macala.

The company is trying to collect $15,000 for a trunk line that connects extensions at the city building.

Former city finance director Sherman Miles said in April there was no contract with AT&T because when he tried to renew a two-year contract with the company in November 2010, he got no response from it.

Miles said that with the authorization of the city’s board of control, he entered into a contract with Delta Telecom in July 2011.

Between November and July, the city still was using AT&T’s service, but was paying higher, out-of- contract rates, Miles said. He said he tried to work with the company and made some payments for the phone service. But, he said, he believed the city should have disputed the out-of-contract rates.

The city’s current finance director, Mike Evanson, who took office in January, said he found the AT&T bill in a stack of papers in his office.

He said he found it after he got a call from the company’s collection agency.

Macala told city council and administrators at a caucus meeting Wednesday that when companies turn over unpaid bills to collection agencies, the collection agencies handle contact with the debtor.

But AT&T contacted the city, he said, after a story appeared in The Vindicator about the dispute in April.

Macala said he sent a letter to the collection agency telling it to stop calling. “[AT&T] came to us,” he said.

“We’ve been trying to work with them,” Macala told The Vindicator after the caucus meeting. “There’s been no admission we owe anything. They say there ‘may’ be some defects in the billing.”

He said that even though there was no signature from AT&T on a contract Miles signed in November 2010, they still would pay AT&T.

“We had service provided,” he said. “The question is, what was the exact value [of the service.]”