Smith won’t settle for $300 credit


Samuel Smith doesn’t have to worry about having his water cut off anymore, but he’s still thousands of dollars short of satisfaction in his dispute with the city of Henderson over 18 years of improper billing.

The Shank Street resident was not at Monday night’s City Council meeting when a 7-0 vote granted him a $300 credit on his overdue water bill (council member Harriette Butler missed the meeting), but he arrived later and said afterward that he was relieved to put his disconnection fears to rest.

The credit represents the amount of late fees Smith has been charged the past three years, and its approval will lower his bill from $399.91 to roughly $9.

Smith brought a 5-foot-high blowup of his disconnection notice to the March 7 council meeting, which was the third consecutive meeting at which he addressed the council about his billing problems.

Smith lives so close to the city limits that he said a break-in through his front door is a matter for city police but a break-in from the back goes to the Vance County Sheriff’s Office, and that location led to confusion in the past about whether he’s a city resident.

His monthly water bill from the city reflected that confusion. For as far back as city records survive (the year 2000), and Smith said for the full 18 years he has lived on Shank Street, the city has properly charged him the nonresident rate for his water and improperly charged him the sanitation fee, which covers trash and recycling services that he doesn’t get.

Smith said he repeatedly questioned his water bills over the years but was always told he was paying the right amount. It wasn’t until this year that he brought the matter to Finance Director Traig Neal, who recognized the error and paid Smith $757, covering three years of overcharges plus one month for the time Neal was investigating the issue.

The three-year cutoff reflected the city’s standard practice on claims that run into the statute of limitations. City Attorney John Zollicoffer later learned that the statute of limitations for municipalities is two years instead of three, but he said the city was protected because it did not intentionally violate the statute.

That’s an important point because the City Council voted 4-2 on Feb. 28 not to pay Smith any more money for fear of violating the statute of limitations and opening Henderson to a slew of outdated claims.

“It’s an embarrassment to me and to the city,” Smith said Monday night. “Right is right.”

The council’s action Monday did not violate the statute, according to Zollicoffer, because it still applies to the past three years.

The decision was not meant as a reversal of the previous vote but as a way to address a specific problem. Although the council decided not to give Smith the $2,238 in sanitation fees he paid beyond the three-year refund, its latest action acknowledged a city role in his falling behind on his bills.

Still, the twists of this tale nearly led the two council members who voted against cutting Smith off at three years to vote against giving him the $300 credit Monday night. And Mayor Clem Seifert, who said he would have voted to pay Smith the full amount before, initially balked at the idea of the $300 credit as a bad precedent.

Council member Bernard Alston, who led the council in standing by the statute of limitations before, said he saw the $300 as a settlement of the city’s problems with Smith. That was good enough for Seifert.

“We’re doing a high-class thing in a low-class way,” said council member Mary Emma Evans, who continues to champion Smith’s cause because “the man needs his money.”

“I do not think it’s fair to him” to pass a “settlement” without Smith there to accept it, said Elissa Yount, who also opposed the statute-of-limitations vote in the hope that the city could find a creative way to make things right for Smith.

“Will this take care of Mr. Smith?” council member Ranger Wilkerson asked, doubting the value of giving Smith anything if he still could return to ask for more. “If we’re going to do this just like we did the speed bumps, I don’t want to do that again.”

Evans went along with the staff recommendation to credit Smith for the late fees “on a bill he never should have been charged.”

Yount cast a yes vote after being assured that the council’s action would not affect Smith’s right to sue the city for the rest of the money he was overcharged over the years.

Zollicoffer repeated his assertion that Smith has no legal case, but Smith said after the meeting that he has not given up on filing a lawsuit to get his money back.

He said he contacted two Raleigh lawyers, but they had heard of his situation and refused to take him as a client.

Evans brought up the possibility Monday night that private citizens might do what the city won’t and repay Smith.

She said she has been told of efforts to set up a bank account to accept donations for Smith, and Yount said she has heard that the organizers will seek dollar donations from people until they raise enough money.

Evans wanted to know whether the city could provide the collection point for the money, but Seifert said no. The city government as a body can’t participate in the fund drive, Zollicoffer said, although individual city employees are welcome to do what they want.