§ 2-297. Findings.

The city council hereby finds and declares as follows:

(1)

The city is a creditor pursuant to 16 CFR 681.2 due to its provision or maintenance of covered accounts for which payment is made in arrears.

(2)

Covered accounts offered to customers for the provision of city services include natural gas, sanitary sewer service, water and solid waste.

(3)

The city's previous experience with identity theft related to covered accounts includes an example several years ago where a customer used her roommate's identity to obtain utility service.

(4)

The processes of opening a new covered account, restoring an existing covered account, making payments on such accounts, cutting service off and giving information concerning utility account balances to real estate closing attorneys have been identified as potential processes in which identity theft could occur.

(5)

The city limits access to personal identifying information to those employees responsible for or otherwise involved in opening or restoring covered accounts or accepting payment for use of covered accounts. Information provided to such employees is entered directly into the city's computer system and is not otherwise recorded.

(6)

The city determines that there is a low risk of identity theft occurring in the following ways:

a.

Use by an applicant of another person's personal identifying information to establish a new covered account;

b.

Use of a previous customer's personal identifying information by another person in an effort to have service restored in the previous customer's name;

c.

Use of another person's credit card, bank account or other method of payment by a customer to pay such customer's covered account; and

d.

Use by a customer desiring to restore such customer's covered account of another person's credit card, bank account or other method of payment.

(Ord. No. 2009-02, § 1(10-203), 5-4-2009)