GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — A Grand Rapids man says he is out thousands of dollars because the city won't pay back money it got from him by mistake.
Abraham Joshua ran an adult foster care home in the Marne area for nearly 11 years. It's a Grand Rapids sewer service customer.
Two years ago, city government sent him a letter telling him that a routine audit found that it had billed him "incorrectly" during that time. The city cut him a check for more than $11,000 — but officials told him city policy lets them go back only four years to refund overcharges.
"They said, 'We can pay you for four years.' And I said, 'I've been paying these bills for 10 years, 11 years now,'" Joshua said. "So what do you say about that?"
Joshua estimates his business is still owed about $18,000 for overcharges.
The mistake was that the system had his property listed in Ottawa County's Wright Township. It is actually just across the line in Tallmadge Township, where the sewer rate is lower. He had been paying the higher Wright rate.
Joshua appealed, but the city's four-year refund cap held firm.
City officials would not discuss the policy in person with Target 8 investigators, but did respond to questions in emails. They said the four-year refund cap was created to "promote fairness and conclusiveness to matters" and encourage people who find billing errors to contact the city promptly to get them corrected.
Joshua said he had no idea he had been overbilled until the city letter saying the audit had found a mistake.
Grand Rapids is not alone in capping refunds. The city of Lowell recently adopted a three-year limit and Wyoming officials say they have a three-year cap as well. But Lowell allows an appeal to the city council and Wyoming says it might refund further back if someone makes a good case.
Joshua called limiting refunds for overbilling "self-serving" and a "brazen attempt by the city to unjustly enrich itself."
"It's not that I just suddenly paid you extra and you can say, 'You made a mistake, tough luck.' They billed me," he said.
"There's a sense that if you shouldn't have paid that money, you should be able to get it back," Michigan State University law professor Daniel Rosenbaum, who specializes in municipal law, said.
"The law isn't quite where our intuition is — at least fully," he added. "I think the law is relatively on the city's side, to give you a blunt answer."
He pointed out that the law limits how far back people can reach in trying to collect money through lawsuits by invoking statutes of limitations.
He suggested that if people don't like refund caps, they may have to resort to political solutions to convince officials to end them.
Meanwhile, Joshua is still hoping to somehow get a bigger refund from Grand Rapids.
"It's not that I'm asking a favor," he said. "I'm asking for what was mine."