Due to the magnitude of the city of Richmond’s errors in attempting to send out 2024 property tax rebate checks to local taxpayers and the complexity of cleaning up the mistake, residents who have not yet received a valid check should expect to wait nearly two more months to get the money.

Checks sent out in the original batch will expire on June 16, Interim Chief Administrative Officer Sabrina Joy-Hogg told the City Council on Monday afternoon. Waiting until after those checks go “stale,” Joy-Hogg said, is “the cleanest way we can do it now without causing confusion.”

“People should have their checks hopefully by June 30 at the latest,” Joy-Hogg said.

Several council members voiced frustration at the city’s inability to give taxpayers relief they were promised when the council approved the rebate plan last fall.

“This is a huge deal. I’m getting lots of emails. People are really concerned,” said Councilor Kenya Gibson (3rd District). “How it feels for residents is that the city is really good at taking their money. But not so good at giving it back.”

Councilor Ellen Robertson (6th District) said flatly that she wasn’t fully convinced the city would be able to get the checks out without more “glitches.”

“It’s a little concerning as to whether or not the corrected action is really going to resolve the magnitude of this error,” Robertson said. “Because the error has too many moving parts.”

The size of the rebate checks will depend on how much a property is worth, but the payments would be around $150 to $200 for the average homeowner.

Monday’s presentation on the rebate check problems revealed more detail about the multi-layered errors. Joy-Hogg said the city has asked Auditor Riad Ali to take a “second look” at what went wrong to ensure the new procedures that have been implemented would prevent a repeat.

The city initially printed about 59,000 rebate checks in March, according to Joy-Hogg. The city was able to stop about 36,000, but 23,000 were mailed.

Of the ones that were mailed, around 8,000 were incorrectly made payable to a group called “Hartshorn Community Council” due to an spreadsheet sorting error.

The city initially didn’t void the batch of checks that went out, Joy-Hogg said, to avoid cancelling valid checks addressed to the intended recipients. However, a few recipients (at least three) were able to cash the erroneous checks despite having the wrong name, Joy-Hogg said.

“Finance will have to recoup that money,” Joy-Hogg said when asked how the city would do about the people who cashed checks made out to someone else. “Because it doesn’t belong to them.”

Once the city realized some of the Hartshorn checks were being cashed, the city attempted to stop the payments. That attempt at cleanup also caused some valid checks to bounce, Joy-Hogg said, and at least 69 people have already requested a refund from the city due to a valid check bouncing.

Because the rebate checks were funded by surplus money from the city’s 2024 fiscal year, the money was supposed to go to property owners who paid taxes on a given property in fiscal year 2024. However, the city accidentally sent around 2,000 rebate checks to the person who owned the property in 2025, not the person who paid taxes on the property in the 2024 budget year.

Councilor Andrew Breton (1st District) pointed out there’s now a variety of situations different Richmond residents could be in depending on their status and how many errors applied to them.

“If I received one that was correct but I’m confused and I don’t cash it and it goes stale, will I get another one?” Breton asked.

Joy-Hogg said someone in that status should get a second check. She also said someone who already cashed a valid check won’t receive a second one in June.

To ensure the fix is executed correctly, Joy-Hogg said, the city felt it was easier to wait for the initial checks to expire on June 16.

“June 17 they will reprint all of the checks and start sending them out,” she said.

Joy-Hogg said she was giving Monday’s presentation on behalf of Finance Director Sheila White because White is busy with both the rebate issue and the vehicle tax bills the city recently sent to residents.

When some council members’ question started to probe into the inner workings of the Finance Department, Joy-Hogg said she couldn’t comment on personnel matters.

Councilor Sarah Abubaker (4th District) asked how the recent resignations of former city revenue director Jamie Atkinson and a deputy revenue director square with the administration’s assurances the Finance Department is seeing a turnaround. Abubaker said it seemed that lower-level employees may be “falling on the sword,” but Joy-Hogg said she wouldn’t discuss it in an open meeting.

“We can discuss it offline,” Joy-Hogg said. “But that is a personnel issue that I’m not going to get into.”

Some council members pointed out that Atkinson stood before them in March to take responsibility for the rebate issues, only to disappear from City Hall a few weeks later with little explanation.

Gibson asked if Joy-Hogg could explain why Atkinson’s departure wasn’t announced until April 28 if it happened on April 21.

“No,” Joy-Hogg replied. “Those are personnel issues I’m not going to get into.”

Abubaker asked when the city was planning to tell residents the checks wouldn’t be coming until the end of June.

Joy-Hogg said the city could probably issue a press release in “mid-June.”

“I think we should probably communicate something this week,” Abubaker said.

Contact Reporter Graham Moomaw at gmoomaw@richmonder.org