Call Kurtis: City Forgets to Bill for Trash for 2 Years; Sends Large Bill
ELK GROVE (CBS13) — Saving his money, Vincent Lim impressively bought his home at the age of 25.
"I budgeted right away," he said as he figured out how much his mortgage and utilities would cost each month.
He says he called the City of Elk Grove to set up trash and other city services and says he was told it would automatically transfer into his name.
City bills did start showing up with his name on them.
"Everything was fine and dandy until I saw that come in."
He's talking about the $807 bill that showed up two years later, after the City of Elk Grove realized he was never charged for trash service. The $21 monthly bill he had been paying was for other city services.
"How am I going to come up with $800?" he asked.
"It's not ideal for sure," said Kristyn Nelson with the City of Elk Grove.
Nelson says an audit found as many as sixty Elk Grove residents had inaccurate bills.
"There was a clerical error that occurred," she said.
However, city code says it can back bill for up to three years.
"We don't want to set somebody up for failure," she said. "But we certainly need to recover our costs."
Vincent understands he owes the money, but wants more time to pay it. After we got involved, the city agreed to give him two years to pay it back.
"Times are hard right now," he said. "People are struggling. I'm struggling. We are all struggling every day."
The City of Elk Grove says it doesn't have a record of Vincent calling up to set up service. The City does admit it knew he was the homeowner and should've caught its billing error sooner.
As for the dozens of others with inaccurate bills, we're told payment plans are being worked out on an individual basis.
