The strange case of Samuel Smith continues to occupy the Henderson City Council’s time.
The Shank Street resident’s past-due water bill was the issue before the Finance and Intergovernmental Relations Committee at its meeting Friday afternoon.
Smith says he was forced to pay a monthly sanitation charge for 18 years even though he lives outside the city limits and receives no municipal trash or recycling service. City records go back only to 2000, but they show Smith being improperly charged the sanitation fee while properly paying out-of-city water rates.
The city refunded roughly three years of sanitation charges, $757, but a divided City Council refused to do more for Smith for fear of knowingly violating the statute of limitations and opening the city to endless old claims. Finance Director Traig Neal has calculated that it would cost the city $2,238 more to cover the previous 15 years of sanitation charges.
While Smith mulls his next step in pursuit of that money, he faces the more immediate problem of a disconnection notice on his water service, effective Monday, because he owes about $399, according to a bill he enlarged to 5 feet high to show the City Council at its meeting March 7.
The council told Neal to work on a repayment plan with Smith to keep his water flowing, and Neal said Friday that Smith is safe from the disconnect list for now.
City Manager Eric Williams said that if the city forgives the late fees charged to Smith during the past three years, the period for which the City Council supported refunding the sanitation fees, the overdue water bill will almost disappear. The balance would fall to about $9.
Those late fees initially were part of the discussion about how much to pay Smith because he blamed his serial tardiness in part on the cumulative effect of the sanitation charge month after month. But the late fees faded from importance as city discussions focused on the statute of limitations.
Williams said he will bring the proposal to the council at its meeting Monday night, although Smith won‘t have to attend the meeting. The city manager said City Attorney John Zollicoffer has said the repayment of the late fees would not violate the city’s stand on the statute of limitations.
“So we’re really giving him his own money back?” said council member Mary Emma Evans, who has championed Smith’s cause, arguing that paying him for the full 18 years he claims is the right thing to do.
FAIR Committee Chairman Bernard Alston disputed Evans’ characterization of the late-fee plan as giving or reimbursing Smith anything. “We are settling a disputed claim.”