Luigi Sella thought he had been paying his property tax bill in full since he moved into his Port Coquitlam home back in 2000.
So he was understandably surprised when he received a letter from the municipality last month explaining that, because of a city hall record keeping snafu, he had not paid his garbage levy in five years.
And Sella is not alone.
According to the city more than 90 homes have not paid their garbage levy, some going as far back as 1989, totaling at least more than $100,000 in lost revenue for the city.
"Me and my wife were shocked," Sella said. "We thought we had been paying our taxes. They made a mistake."
Now the city is asking for some of its money back.
According to city policy Sella will only have to cover the last two years of missed payments, a total of approximately $500. In cases where home ownership has changed in the last 24 months, the city will only collect from the time the new resident has taken possession of the property.
Mindy Smith, PoCo's director of corporate services, said the number of homes that were missed for the garbage levy likely started small - one or two - and grew over time. With the fluctuating rate, she said it would be difficult to estimate how much money in potential revenue was lost, but added it was likely more than $100,000.
"It is just too far back to calculate," she said. "We may not even have any records going back that far."
She added that the city hopes to collect about $40,000 from the last two years of missed payments.
Much of the garbage levy that the city collects are flow-through costs paid to Metro Vancouver for disposal fees. Smith said the regional district has been paid in full for every year of its service and that the cost of the lost revenue was spread out over all of PoCo's taxpayers.
The problem first came to light a couple months ago when staff updated its record keeping software.
Brian North, PoCo's manager of revenue and collections, said while errors like this have happened in the past, they are usually one-offs. The new software the city uses, he added, is what helped staff identify the large number of homes not paying their garbage levy.
"Errors have happened," he said. "This time we were able to identify every house in the city to see if they have been charged. Something like this is pretty rare."
With the new software, North said it is unlikely that the city could repeat the mistake.
