San Diego officials say nearly as many people were undercharged as overcharged in a trash billing scandal uncovered last week that affected about 87,000 city customers.
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The city was unable to correct the errors before property tax bills get mailed out in October, forcing the county to send overcharged customers a second, corrected bill that includes a special city insert explaining the situation.
Those corrected bills and insert explainers will be sent to about 44,000 customers who were overcharged in a scandal, first reported by The San Diego Union-Tribune, that city officials are blaming on a technical glitch.
The corrected bills are expected to arrive in the mail after an initial bill containing a higher, inaccurate amount arrives, said Nicole Darling, a city spokesperson.
While the bills won’t start being sent until October, the county was too far along in the process of preparing to print the bills to avoid the erroneous bills being sent out, Darling said.
About 43,000 city trash customers who were undercharged because of the technical glitch will receive only one bill, which will contain a lower, inaccurate amount.
Those undercharged customers are being told to pay the amount that appears on the mailed bill they receive, despite that amount being erroneously low.
City and county officials are still trying to figure out how the undercharged customers will be billed later for the additional amount they owe, said Darling, explaining that it could be handled by either the city or the county.
She said city and county officials are scheduled to meet Tuesday to discuss that issue and any other unresolved issues caused by the scandal. The city will likely have to reimburse the county for additional printing costs.
The city and county managed to correct all the erroneous billing amounts on the county tax collector’s website by Saturday. The city’s trash portal always showed the correct amounts.
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City officials say the technical glitch took place when trash billing data was transferred from the city to the county, with some lines of data getting duplicated somehow.
The city’s other roughly 133,000 trash customers will receive a property tax bill showing the correct amount. They are unaffected by the glitch.
The 44,000 overcharged customers were typically charged somewhere around $100 too much, but some were overcharged by much wider margins.
The second bill that those customers get from the county will say “corrected” on it. The city insert will instruct them to pay the lower amount and explain how to get a refund if they paid before the amount was corrected online Saturday.
Trash fees are being charged through property tax bills because San Diego decided to use that option when it began billing for trash last year. The goal was to avoid spending millions to create a city trash billing department.
Darling said the city is also taking steps to prevent the billing errors from affecting people with impound mortgage accounts.
When property tax bills arrive each fall, lenders handling impound accounts divide the annual property tax bill — including any additional fees like the trash charge — into 12 equal installments and add it to monthly mortgage payments.
Darling said the city has secured a list of mortgage lenders — and a third-party company many of them use — so that city officials can prevent any problems with impound accounts.
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The city has created a frequently-asked questions page about the problems.
