I have a house in a small town of about 100 people. The prior owner of the house built a garage on the property, but I have since learned that it is likely that the garage was not built entirely on the property.

In an attempt to figure out how this could happen, I asked the City if a building permit had been issued to allow construction of the garage. Because the City is so small, I was directed to contact a private company that issues permits (and presumably performs inspections) for the City. I called this company, gave them my address. The next day I received an e-mail stating that they had no record of permit for the construction of a garage on my property.

This occurred about two months ago.

Yesterday, I received an e-mail message from the City Clerk, stating that I owed the City $69 for the activities described above. Apparently, this private company billed the CIty 15 minutes of time to take my original phone call and then billed the City an additional 30 minutes to actually investigate the situation. The City is now trying to force me to pay this bill.

Not being a lawyer, and not knowing what is legal, I find this to be entirely absurd. I was never told (or implied) that there would be a charge for this service. Also, the private company's billing practice is ridiculous. The phone conversation did not take more than 2-3 minutes and it's ridiculous to charge someone 30 minutes to look up information in a database. In looking at other cities around here, the typical charge to look up prior permit information ranges from free to $10.

It is either a legal procedure of your city-or not.
Ask for the regulation that established the procedure.
If it requires that you be advised that there is a cost before you call that company and you weren't so advised, maybe you can fight it.
I wasn't surprised at your account. Many towns have cut back on employees and farm out many of the activities that they used to do in-house.
Most of the small cities I have lived in rely on newspapers to describe these types of changes via articles about council meetings and those meetings are usually open to the public also.
$ 69 for 45 minutes of work equates to about $ 80 per hour which is not much for an engineering company's time if that is the case, and assuming that there is proper authorization for the procedure the city used.

Blaine, Minnesota? Population in 2010: 57,186

Or perhaps a smaller town nearby?

At any rate, respond to the e-mail by indicating you were never notified that there would be a charge for this lookup, and unless they can show how you received prior notice that there would be a charge, you will not pay it.

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Originally Posted by smearcase

It is either a legal procedure of your city-or not.
Ask for the regulation that established the procedure.
If it requires that you be advised that there is a cost before you call that company and you weren't so advised, maybe you can fight it.
I wasn't surprised at your account. Many towns have cut back on employees and farm out many of the activities that they used to do in-house.
Most of the small cities I have lived in rely on newspapers to describe these types of changes via articles about council meetings and those meetings are usually open to the public also.
$ 69 for 45 minutes of work equates to about $ 80 per hour which is not much for an engineering company's time if that is the case, and assuming that there is proper authorization for the procedure the city used.

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The rate of charge is $92 per hour. This is a reasonable rate for a licensed professional engineer (I am one) doing engineering work, but I was charged 15 minutes for the original phone call taking the request (i.e. by an office assistant) and another 30 minutes to look up the information. Neither of these jobs require a licensed engineer; this is office-staff work (answering the phone and looking up records). Nothing against office staff work, but charging $92 per hour for it is a little ridiculous.

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Originally Posted by AK lawyer

Blaine, Minnesota? Population in 2010: 57,186

Or perhaps a smaller town nearby?

At any rate, respond to the e-mail by indicating you were never notified that there would be a charge for this lookup, and unless they can show how you recieved prior notice that there would be a charge, you will not pay it.

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It's not Blaine, MN... it's a small town a couple of hours away.

I have already responded in a way that you suggested. The city clerk responded to my response, stating that the city council had met, discussed the issue, and decided that the bill was 100% my responsibility.

My question, I guess, is if I refuse to pay... would I have a good chance of winning this at small claims court? (or, would this go to small claims court? How would a dispute like this be settled?)

I am happy to pay a reasonable fee to look up records, but $69 is ridiculous. It is also ridiculous that I was never told any cost prior to performing the service (either by the private company or by the city). What would have stopped them for charging me $500 or $1000 or more?

Isn't there something, legally speaking, to protect consumers in this situation?

For example, I have been asked technical questions at a previous city council meeting (I am a licensed professional engineer)... what would prevent me from submitting an invoice to them for $250 for answering such a question? I mean, I never told them I would charge them, which is precisely what they are doing to me.

Presumably. Your lack of a contract with the city to perform services on their behalf, as the company that did the research may have-- or maybe not. Still to be determined.

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Originally Posted by frazwood;

My question, I guess, is if I refuse to pay... would I have a good chance of winning this at small claims court? (or, would this go to small claims court? How would a dispute like this be settled?)

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Perhaps, but I don't know that they are limited to small claims court. Another consideration is this: knowing their way of solving budget issues, I would guess they don't have a full-time city attorney. Usually a corporation (such as a city government) may not appear in small claims court except by an attorney. Are they prepared to hire an attorney to sue you? :)

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Originally Posted by frazwood

For example, I have been asked technical questions at a previous city council meeting (I am a licensed professional engineer)... what would prevent me from submitting an invoice to them for $250 for answering such a question? I mean, I never told them I would charge them, which is precisely what they are doing to me.

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Very good point. I suggest you go to the council meeting and bring this up with the council. Might be an interesting way to get some answers. :)

This is what I suspect is going on here: The contractor sent the city an outlandish bill. Not knowing what to do about it, the city forwarded the bill to you. The councilmen/women are acting like proverbial deer in headlights about the bill from their contractor.

I agree, my response would be that after a meeting you have determined it is not your bill.

No notice of charges were given,

But in their defense, most companies have a 15 min billing min for services, call an attorneys office and most likely it will be 30 min for that phone call, not 15 min.

And charges for work is not always actual, most likely research is billed at 30 min charges

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Originally Posted by AK lawyer

Perhaps, but I don't know that they are limited to small claims court. Another consideration is this: knowing their way of solving budget issues, I would guess they don't have a full-time city attorney. Usually a corporation (such as a city government) may not appear in small claims court except by an attorney. Are they prepared to hire an attorney to sue you? :)


Very good point. I suggest you go to the council meeting and bring this up with the council. Might be an interesting way to get some answers. :)

This is what I suspect is going on here: The contractor sent the city an outlandish bill. Not knowing what to do about it, the city forwarded the bill to you. The councilmen/women are acting like proverbial deer in headlights about the bill from their contractor.

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You are correct; they do not have a full-time attorney. I also know that they are afraid to get their attorney involved, as he charges them for reading every e-mails that they send.

My final question is what authority/leverage does the city have to force me to pay this bill? Is their only option is to take me to small claims court? Or, for example, could they place a lien on my property? Or some other legal machination of which I am unaware?

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My final question is what authority/leverage does the city have to force me to pay this bill? Is their only option is to take me to small claims court? Or, for example, could they place a lien on my property? Or some other legal machination of which I am unaware?

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It's not a tax, so I really doubt that they have any option to place a tax lien or other device.

Another angle I thought of: your information request is be covered by a state F.O.I.A., which limits the amount they are entitled to charge.

"... (c) The responsible authority or designee shall provide copies of public data upon request. If a person requests copies or electronic transmittal of the data to the person, the responsible authority may require the requesting person to pay the actual costs of searching for and retrieving government data, including the cost of employee time, and for making, certifying, and electronically transmitting the copies of the data or the data, but may not charge for separating public from not public data. However, if 100 or fewer pages of black and white, letter or legal size paper copies are requested, actual costs shall not be used, and instead, the responsible authority may charge no more than 25 cents for each page copied. If the responsible authority or designee is not able to provide copies at the time a request is made, copies shall be supplied as soon as reasonably possible.
..."

AK,
That's an excellent point and possibly one that the city overlooked even if they enacted a policy in their council. I was involved in FOIA requests as a rep. of a state government and I didn't think of it but I should have.

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Originally Posted by AK lawyer

It's not a tax, so I really doubt that they have any option to place a tax lien or other device.

Another angle I thought of: your information request is be covered by a state F.O.I.A., which limits the amount they are entitled to charge.

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So, if I understand this correctly, you are saying that the City can only charge me $0.25 per page of information?

In my case, there was no construction permit filed... which means that there were zero pages of information, which means that the City can charge me, legally speaking, zero? Is that what you are saying?

This seems far too easy and simple.

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Originally Posted by smearcase

AK,
That's an excellent point and possibly one that the city overlooked even if they enacted a policy in their council. I was involved in FOIA requests as a rep. of a state government and I didn't think of it but I should have.

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You are assuming far too much -- there is no established policy. They are literally making this up as they go along.

The email from the City clerk even went so far as to say (paraphrasing): the city would have paid the cost if I had filed for a permit rather than requesting a copy of a potentially filed, previous permit. This, of course, is ludicrous and totally non-standard... in every case that I know, permits cost money... primarily to cover the costs of the analysis of plans, inspection of the work, etc.

Ok. The city has no rules or established policy. But, the state has regulations about how requests for information are to be handled. You were requesting information. Bring the MN FOIA language to their attention and they may change their opinion. If they don't, either drop it or take whatever action the law allows you to take.

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Originally Posted by smearcase

Ok. The city has no rules or established policy. But, the state has regulations about how requests for information are to be handled. You were requesting information. Bring the MN FOIA language to their attention and they may change their opinion. If they don't, either drop it or take whatever action the law allows you to take.

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I apologize if you took my response to be anything other than appreciative.

I am now entering the "humor" phase of this situation. The City Council has a habit of essentially doing whatever they want, whenever they want. This is but one of many strange rulings that they have promulgated in the 2 years that I have been in this town. It's an amazingly complicated city, considering it has only 109 residents.

No apology needed. Just trying to stick to facts as much as possible except that I did miscalculate the hourly rate. I have a lot of experience with state contracts for construction and consulting engineer inspection agreements. It is hard for me to imagine that these engineers you have been dealing with don't have any guidelines to use when they are acting on behalf of a city. With all the overhead rates, administrative costs and profit %'s that our consultant engineers were allowed (per written agreement and contract) to use in their billing, a bill for the services you have described would have been probably 4 or 5 times higher.
But if in my position if I had been dumb enough to charge someone the way you were charged and they brought me that clause that AK pointed out to you, I would have torn up the bill and slinked back into my office, before my boss got wind of it.
Our FOIA requests had to be in writing and had to include a reference to it being a FOIA request but if someone came in or called not knowing that, we would have simply told them what the procedure was and we would have even have accepted a handwritten letter prepared on the spot, if the records they wanted were readily accessible. We did have to pre-review the files to make sure that we pulled out "protected" documents such as personnel matters and others that did not have to be released per law. Each year in that state, reporters from newspapers all over the state go to each other's areas (where they aren't known) and randomly go to govt. offices and request documents to test how the law is being followed. It is rare for them to find complete compliance even though the law has been in effect for a long time. The most common flaw I think is that they are asked why they want the document which as I understand it is completely irrelevant, at least per that state's law.