Vicksburg utility customers will soon be able to pay their bills online, said Billy Gordon director of information technology.

It’s the next step in a modernization process that already allows customers to view their bills on the Internet.

Separately, Tammye Christmas, director of the Vicksburg Water and Gas Administration, said no unusual need for customers to make partial payments on their gas bills has arisen so far this year.

The online services have been made possible by a software upgrade purchased by the city and installed earlier this year, Gordon said.

Since about September, customers have been able to access detailed account information from the city’s Web site, www.vicksburg.org, Gordon said. Online payments using debit- or credit-card accounts are expected to be accepted on the site within about two months, Gordon added.

The online services were included as part of an upgrade to the water-and-gas department’s billing system that cost about $22,000 or $23,000.

A personal-identification number is required for account access and may be obtained through the site using the customer’s account number. Customers who establish new accounts are being issued PINs, Christmas said.

Vicksburg has about 10,000 meter connections and sells natural gas, water, sewer and residential garbage collection services.

Additional security software for the online-payment service is to cost about $500 to $700 and the service itself is to cost about $50 to $75 monthly, Gordon added.

Once the online-payment option is established it should make things easier for the water-and-gas department and for at least some customers, Christmas said.

&#8220It will be a lot more convenient for people who are out-of-town (when bills are due) and different things that occur,” Christmas said. &#8220It’s another way for them” to pay.

The city department has offered utility-bill-payment by automatic withdrawal from bank accounts for several years, Gordon said. Under that option customers continue to receive paper bills but have the money automatically withdrawn from accounts on the date their bills are due, Gordon said.

The city’s natural-gas rate this month for a residential customer consuming 200 cubic feet of gas is $17.38 per thousand cubic feet, Strategic Planner Paul Rogers said. That rate is about 1 1/2 times last year’s December rate, $11.54.

From October to January last year that rate nearly doubled, from $10.18 to $19.92, making it difficult for some customers to afford. The city offered such customers the option of paying at least half their account balance or their peak amount billed the previous year, whichever was greater, and extending their due dates on the remainder of their balances by 15 days.

No such partial-payment arrangements have been made necessary so far this year, but if any such need arises it would likely begin to do so &#8220after this (billing) period,” Christmas said. Nighttime low temperatures have reached the low 20s and have been at or near record lows this week.

Christmas said she and the board had yet to discuss a plan for such arrangements this year but that she would expect last year’s policy to be extended to this year if necessary.

The sharp rise in rates this year was attributed in part to a rise in the cost the city paid for gas of $3.2 million, from $5.5 million to $8.8 million, from the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2005, to the one that ended at the same time this year. Effective from October 2005 through June the city has put in place five fuel adjustments, three upward followed by two down.

The largest upward adjustment was for $8.38 and resulted in the January peak. The adjustments put in place in November and December 2005, which total to $1.36, were due to expire this year but have been extended to complete the repayment of $1.7 million in loans to the gas fund from other city funds that were made during the fiscal year that ended in September, Rogers said.

The city also raised its unadjusted rate from September to October, from $10.18 to $11.80.

Before the fiscal year that ended in September the city contributed from its general fund a subsidy to its gas fund. The subsidy for the fiscal year that ended in 2005 was $1.7 million.

Including the subsidy and loan for the two fiscal years that ended most recently, the gas fund operated at respective deficits of $1.1 million and $419,116, Rogers said.