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I am a regular contributor here but I need to share something on an anonymous basis. My co-op has a dirty little secret!
For our NYC water bill, we finally went from frontage billing to metered billing. Then the bills for one meter stopped. Then the bills for another meter stopped. It has been almost 12 months since the last usage being billed.
While we are saving up funds for someone to wake up and charge us, with all of the overbilling in the past due to their delay in switching us to metered billing from frontage billing (years), I feel no moral or ethical compulsion to alert them of the error.
Has anyone else had a similar experience? I have heard that they cannot go back more than four years to collect: is that true? One of the meters is approaching four years from being billed last.
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Anon - In my humble and non-legally-qualified opinion, you absolutely must discuss this with your board attorney as soon as possible. There may be interest and penalties associated with non-payment, even if you have not received any bills from the city in years. If that is true, and your attorney determines that you are liable for punitive charges, it will be a lot easier to get the City to reduce or eliminate them if you take the first step and voluntarily notify the City. If they eventually figure it out (and they will), they won't be so predisposed to working with you at that point.
At the same time you may able to negotiate with the City for a rebate of some of the charges based on their frontage calculations. Since you now have documented proof of your actual water usage, if the discrepancy is large there may be some grounds to negotiate. Of course, the City may simply tell you that this was the way it was done before direct metering and you're just outta luck. Discuss this with your attorney as well.
Consider the lack of invoices like tooth pain. It may not bother you for a while, but the longer you wait the more it will hurt in the end.
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