In March, Patrick Bollom sued the city of St. Paul, as well as the director of the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections and a plan review supervisor, claiming he had been overcharged for $1,960.78 in building permits to perform construction on his Berkeley Avenue home.

Rather than simply demand a partial refund on his own behalf, the Macalester-Groveland homeowner has maintained that his case forms the basis of a class-action lawsuit that could force the city to rewrite its permitting fees and possibly return $1.5 million to $6.6 million in overcharges per year to permit holders.

The cumulative citywide overcharges, according to his lawsuit, total more than $22 million from 2018 to 2023 alone, and were documented in the city’s own building reports to the Minnesota Department of La

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