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The mess over a faulty engineer's report which resulted in thousands of downtown residents being overcharged hundreds of thousands of dollars in assessments for the downtown Property-based Improvement District (PBID) is nearly over.
The district provides downtown neighborhoods "enhanced" services such as graffiti abatement, sidewalk maintenance, and “safety ambassadors” on Segways, among other items.
Last month, on March 13, the City Attorney and SCI Consulting Group, the company that developed the engineer's report, agreed to settle the lawsuit that the City filed in Orange County Superior Court in October of last year.
This coming Tuesday, city councilmembers will be asked to approve what is now an undisclosed settlement.
If approved, it will be an end to what has been years of broken promises from the City of San Diego to residents, the few that knew, who were overcharged on their annual property bills.
In 2010, the Reader first reported the news of the errant assessments. Since, some residents have spent hundreds of hours hounding city officials and city councilmembers to notify residents of the mistake and to start issuing refunds.
They were somewhat successful.
Last month, the City began issuing partial refunds to the people that filled out claim forms with the City, as reported by KPBS. Even then, however, the City Attorney and city council have decided to stick to their guns by rejecting any claim more than four-years old, past the statute of limitations for claims.
As to whether the City will be receiving money from the settlement, and if all that money will go towards refunds for residents is unknown at this time.
Click the links below to read the court documents:
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/documents/2013/apr/14/city-vs-sci-consulting-settlement/ http://www.sandiegoreader.com/documents/2013/apr/14/city-vs-sci-consulting/
The mess over a faulty engineer's report which resulted in thousands of downtown residents being overcharged hundreds of thousands of dollars in assessments for the downtown Property-based Improvement District (PBID) is nearly over.
The district provides downtown neighborhoods "enhanced" services such as graffiti abatement, sidewalk maintenance, and “safety ambassadors” on Segways, among other items.
Last month, on March 13, the City Attorney and SCI Consulting Group, the company that developed the engineer's report, agreed to settle the lawsuit that the City filed in Orange County Superior Court in October of last year.
This coming Tuesday, city councilmembers will be asked to approve what is now an undisclosed settlement.
If approved, it will be an end to what has been years of broken promises from the City of San Diego to residents, the few that knew, who were overcharged on their annual property bills.
In 2010, the Reader first reported the news of the errant assessments. Since, some residents have spent hundreds of hours hounding city officials and city councilmembers to notify residents of the mistake and to start issuing refunds.
They were somewhat successful.
Last month, the City began issuing partial refunds to the people that filled out claim forms with the City, as reported by KPBS. Even then, however, the City Attorney and city council have decided to stick to their guns by rejecting any claim more than four-years old, past the statute of limitations for claims.
As to whether the City will be receiving money from the settlement, and if all that money will go towards refunds for residents is unknown at this time.
Click the links below to read the court documents:
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/documents/2013/apr/14/city-vs-sci-consulting-settlement/ http://www.sandiegoreader.com/documents/2013/apr/14/city-vs-sci-consulting/