At their most recent meeting, the Wellman City Council adopted an increase to their required utility deposits.

In order for a new resident, renter, or developer to utilize the city owned gas and water services, they are required to present a deposit to move those services into their name. The deposit for gas is increasing from $75 to $200, the deposit for water is increasing from $75 to $100. It is refundable after 12 months if timely payments are made to the account during that period. This deposit change does not apply to current residents at this time, and would only do so if issues arose with delinquency in their account and their service had to be disconnected. At that point to reconnect the service, the resident would be subject to the deposit. Wellman City Administrator Kelly Litwiller says that this change was made because of the high renter turnover and frequent delinquent accounts in the city. The ordinance went into effect immediately upon its passage at Monday’s meeting.