If Samuel Smith doesn’t get his money, he told the Henderson City Council on Monday night, City Manager Eric Williams should resign.
If Williams doesn’t resign, Smith said, the council should fire him.
And if the council doesn’t fire Williams, Smith said, the city’s voters should fire the council.
That’s the way the Shank Street resident thinks the chain of negligence should fall as he faces the shutoff of his water and the loss of 15 years of payments for sanitation services he didn’t receive.
Smith has said that until he raised the issue with Finance Director Traig Neal this year, he paid a monthly sanitation charge for his entire 18 years in his home on Shank Street. But the home is just outside the city and thus doesn’t receive city trash and recycling pickups.
City records go back only to 2000, but they show Smith was charged for sanitation the whole time.
While paying the city sanitation fee, Smith also properly paid nonresident water rates. Because one charge is exclusively for those inside the city and the other only hits those outside the city, they should never appear on the same bill, and Smith argued again Monday night that years ago when he questioned his high water bill, the city staff should have spotted the error.
Neal paid Smith $757 to cover three years of sanitation fees, in the mistaken belief that the statute of limitations for Smith’s claim was three years. City Attorney John Zollicoffer later learned that it was two years.
Paying Smith for the other 15 years would cost the city $2,238.
Smith made his third consecutive appearance before the council Monday night to appeal for that refund. But this time he seemed more resigned to the likelihood that he will never see the money, and he focused much of his appearance on the consequences for those who have wronged him.
Smith did not repeat a previous threat to sue the city.
“I’d like to ask the city manager to resign for … not returning my phone calls and not handling the situation,” Smith said.
Zollicoffer advised that the council could not discuss Williams’ job performance in public.
(By coincidence, the council did later discuss how to evaluate Williams, who has yet to face a job appraisal by the council elected in 2003. Elissa Yount asked whether the council was breaching Williams’ contract by not performing the required appraisal, but Bernard Alston said there was no breach because both sides agreed to the delay while discussing whether to change the appraisal process. A committee formed for that purpose has been stalled while the council has bounced from crisis to crisis, but Alston promised to bring a timetable for completing the task to the council meeting March 21.)
Smith demanded a written explanation of the statute of limitations from Zollicoffer, who said he would have it ready Wednesday morning.
Council member Mary Emma Evans continued to dispute the logic of refusing to pay Smith his money because of the statute of limitations, even though the city already exceeded the statute of limitations by paying three years instead of two.
Zollicoffer repeated his explanation that the overpayment was a good-faith mistake; paying Smith 18 years would be a willful waiving of the statute of limitations.
Evans said the city has overpaid people based on Zollicoffer’s mistaken reading of the statute of limitations for two decades, yet it can’t manage to make good on what it took from Smith.
“Three years is closer to 18 than two years is,” City Manager Eric Williams said.
Smith hinted at a higher judge than the voters for those who have wronged him. “I’m thankful there’s a God,” he said. “I wish every last one of you attended the church that I attend to hear my pastor preach.”
He has a more down-to-earth, more immediate concern, however. Smith showed the council a 5-foot-high blowup of a water cutoff notice he received. According to the letter, he owes the city more than $300 and must pay more than $200 by March 21 to keep the water flowing.
Mayor Clem Seifert said he’s sure Neal will work with Smith to make arrangements that will avoid a cutoff, as he would with anyone who had financial difficulties or possible special circumstances such as leaks.