Catching up: The Hartshorn Community Council showed up on hundreds of incorrectly issued rebate checks
Name: Hartshorn Community Council
Why you know them: You might have received a check in the mail from the city of Richmond made out to this homeowners association. The city’s finance department erroneously made out thousands of rebate checks issued earlier this year to the group, which, it turns out, wasn’t even eligible.
Graham Moomaw
What's happening now
Earlier this year, Albert Ruffin received five different phone calls from neighbors saying they had his mail.
People were calling to say they’d received checks made out to Hartshorn Community Council, the homeowners’ association where Ruffin serves as treasurer. It was weird, Ruffin said; he ended up getting about 10 more phone calls, and between 75 and 80 checks were forwarded to the HOA’s post office box from well-meaning neighbors.
Ruffin said he realized what was going on when he saw a report on the news: The city of Richmond accidentally printed thousands of erroneous tax rebate checks with the HOA’s name on them. That explained it, Ruffin said, and the checks were immediately discarded.
“We shredded them all, every last one of them,” he said.
As property values across Richmond rose, the City Council decided to offer one-time tax rebate checks to homeowners in lieu of changing its real estate tax rate. The decision was made in 2024, in the last months of then-Mayor Levar Stoney’s administration.
But since the rebate was a one-time payment, there was no established distribution protocol. Data errors occurred as information was moved around manually in Microsoft Excel, city officials told The Richmonder earlier this year.
Ruffin said he knew something was wrong. After all, Hartshorn only pays stormwater fees to the city and wasn’t even eligible for the rebate, he said.
No one from the city reached out to the HOA, Ruffin said, but the message from the news was good enough for him.
“They told everybody to disregard and shred, so there was no use of calling. They said, ‘just disregard the checks,’” he said. “I figured they didn't want me to deliver or return them, I assume they already voided them out.”
It’s still unclear why Hartshorn Community Council’s name in particular was printed on thousands of rebate checks. But in total, data errors caused more than $115,000 in potential overpayments and around $80,900 in potential underpayments, according to a review from the city auditor’s office.
“It was a weird few days for the homeowners’ association,” Ruffin said.
Ruffin said he was concerned when he first heard the news, because he didn’t know which way it was going to go. But things are totally back to normal now, he said.
“There’s been no effect whatsoever on us. We’ve returned to business as usual,” Ruffin said. “We’re glad it ended that way – we’re glad that it ended well.”
