Members of the Toledo Lions Club are moving forward with plans for a Veterans Day parade in town next month after the Toledo City Council approved their permit application to close roads on the parade route.
Toledo’s Veterans Day parade will be held on Saturday, Nov. 8, beginning at the Toledo Middle School at 1 p.m.
The parade will follow the same route as the Toledo Cheese Days parade — heading south on North Fifth Street from the middle school, then east on Augustus Street, then south South Second Street before the final turn west on Oak Street to the parade’s finish at the Kemp Olson Memorial Park and RV Campground.
City councilors approved the permit during their regular meeting on Monday, Oct. 6, inside Toledo City Hall.
During the meeting, councilors also spent some time discussing a city staff proposal on contracting with InvoiceCloud, Inc., a Boston, Massachusetts-based company which provides municipalities with a utility billing and payment platform.
Councilors also approved a new ordinance establishing code enforcement policies including establishing members of the Toledo Planning Commission as hearings examiners for code violation proceedings.
InvoiceCloud vs Doxo
Currently, Toledo residents can have their utility bills mailed to them, or use Doxo, Inc., a Bellevue-based company which provides a third-party digital billing platform for users to consolidate all of their bills, ranging from utilities to phone bills to mortgage payments, and even medical bills.
However, Doxo does have its drawbacks. One of these drawbacks is a $1.50 per payment processing fee which the city currently absorbs according to Toledo City Clerk Rachel Campbell.
Additionally, given that Doxo is a third-party entity, should a customer have issues with the platform or need to do something like edit payment information, city staff can only direct the customers to Doxo’s own customer support.
The monthly fee charged to the city for InvoiceCloud services is $495, or $5,940 a year.
Doxo has also recently found itself in legal trouble after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court last year.
The lawsuit alleged the company violated the FTC Act by misleading customers into thinking payments were going directly to the agencies billing them along with charging millions of dollars in “junk fees” added onto customer bills and automatically enrolling customers in unwanted subscription services without their consent. Earlier this year a motion to dismiss the lawsuit made by Doxo was denied.
Moving away from Doxo has other advantages as well according to Toledo Utilities Clerk Sarah Hazlett. With the contract for InvoiceCloud, city staff will have direct back-end access to resolve problems for customers as fast as possible.
“I’ve had that happen multiple times, where (a customer’s) credit card got stolen and they had to get a new card and they already had that set up through Doxo, and they can’t fix it,” Hazlett said. “I can’t help them, which sucks, because I want to be able to.”
Hazlett added she would still offer customers the option of having physical copies of bills sent in the mail.
Processing fees for InvoiceCloud are 3.95% for credit card payments, 2.95% for electronic check payments and $0.95 for phone payments.
Campbell believed it would take around one to two years to get all city residents switched over from using Doxo to using InvoiceCloud.
While he did like the payment fee transparency offered by InvoiceCloud, Toledo City Councilor Eric Hayes did express support for allowing customers to keep using Doxo if they wished.
“Don’t be so quick to get rid of Doxo, because the people who are already struggling to pay their bill, you’ve just increased it by $10,” Hayes said.
Ultimately, Hayes, along with several other councilors, wanted more information about the InvoiceCloud contract and services available, and motioned to table making a decision on the staff proposal until the next regular council meeting, scheduled for Monday, Oct. 20, at 6 p.m.
