Question about providing 5 Day Remedy notice to tenants

[Brian Johnson]

Hi All, 

Running into a bit of an issue with our current tenants that haven't paid the water bill in a few months. I recently received a tax notice for City of Madison so I reached out to them to have them take care of it immediately. Got the whole 'ya we'll take care of it' and they still haven't. Before I got into being a landlord I had an old mentor that provided his forms to me and one of them is a 5 day remedy notice to resolve the breach of contract, in this case not paying utilities, or we would move to send a 14 day notice to vacate the premise.

Since it does specifically state in our lease that they need to stay current with utilities or it's a breech of contract, is it alright to send this over to them and start that process? Some of the notes within this doc say I should try giving it to them in person twice then send it to their mailing address if I can't reach them. The issue is that they currently aren't residing in the unit. So would emailing them this notice be sufficient?

Seems a little aggressive, but I feel like this is the step I need to take so they can take this seriously. Just want to make sure I'm approaching it right so it doesn't backfire. I have reached out to them a couple times now and they have acknowledged they would pay but since they haven't I figured this makes sense. Please let me know what you guys think.

Thanks!