I spoke with Susan Quick today and asked about a few questions that have come up. The answers are the way I understood them and are not an actual transcript so inaccuracies are my responsibility.
Why don’t we see partial payments online for people on the payment plan?
The older version of the software didn’t allow partial payments, so the partial payments were put into an escrow account and brought over when there was enough to pay off the full amount. The newer version does support partial payments, so eventually we’ll start seeing partial payments on the public website.
Was everyone not on the payment plan printed in the original listing in the paper and was everyone on the paper left off? (Basically asking if everything was consistent from person to person.)
Yes.
There are allegations that thousands of dollars of interest were “written off” and not collected. Were there any circumstances where non-trivial amounts of interest were ignored?
No. The amounts written off were small amounts where the cost of tracking down the additional fees would have cost more than what would have been collected.
Even though the payment plan is gone, can people come in and make partial payments?
Yes. People can make partial payments. It will be applied to the interest first and then to the principle.
So people can basically create their own “do it yourself” payment plan if they need more time to pay?
Yes. The treasurer’s office can accept partial payment so people can come in and pay smaller amounts toward the amount they owe.
I looked at the list of people on the payment plan and comparing it to names printed in the paper. What a mess! First of all, I had heard some say that they were on the payment plan but their names had been printed. Well, I just scanned the amendment listing of those on the elusive payment plan and I counted roughly 67. So, I thought, 147 – 67 = 80 names not there? But it got worse when I started to compare it. OK, on the elusive payment plan listing, properties were combined for a total for an individual, say I own 3 lots and each one has a tax of $60.00 so it would read out as only 1 entry of the 147 but with the amendment listing, that person would show all 3 properties listed separately, reducing that 67 by 2. (The first entry in the newspaper was for a person with 5 properties and on the list of the 147, he was counted as one which shorts the list 4 more properties than the original 67 and he was not the only one like this.) I do not understand this. It cannot be both ways. Either everyone on the payment plan would get their names published or not. Plus, as I said, many did not have a contract to pay on the year in question for delinquent taxes of 2010. Mark, you found an error of $200.00 on Susan’s taxes alone. That is one of the 147 for one year’s taxes. Did anyone in the office know how to compute interest and if they realized that the computer was making these errors, did maybe anyone have a calculator that they could use to figure the amounts? Surely the time to compute the interest and the energy the calculator used would have been worth the effort. Seriously, we are talking basic math here. I saw in the minutes that the County was going to have to borrow money for a sewer project I think it was, this increases the cost of the payment plan to the taxpayers. Again basic math dictates that we are extending credit when we cannot afford to do that and most were not using the program to catch up but to delay as long as possible with the blessing of the County Treasurer. I do not believe either that the County Treasurer’s Office has the time to actually take care of these accounts properly and I surely don’t want to add staff and have the program cost us more money.
The sewer project is for a new district that includes people at the lake. The idea is that it will pay for itself. Taxpayers who aren’t getting the sewer don’t want to be paying for the lake houses to get sewer. So the project is self funding. I believe it will be paid for by a bond. The notes about increasing the amount borrowed was merely saying that if the cost is higher it will just be rolled into the cost of the sewer district to be paid by people on the sewer expansion project instead of by the general tax payers.
Regarding the payment plan, where is your 147 number coming from? The paper work I have has 143 pages in it although three of them appear to have miss scanned and I’ll need to go back through it to figure out what got left out.
I’m sorry Mark, it is 143 that were supposed to be on the payment plan (this is more than 143 properties since each name includes or appears to include all properties owned by the individual on the plan). But these were not all left out of the newspaper or the bidding off to the County Commissioners. The 67 printed is still decreased by individuals with more than one property. The first entry in the 2nd printing has 6 listings (Barnett) and equals 1 of the 143 people. (Bowman has 3) (Button has 2) (Dickens has 6) (Harris has 3) (T Quick has 5) (Rash has 7) (Valdez has 2) so reduction would be roughing it out: 67 (I think it is difficult to read the listing for me)-5-2-1-5-2-4-7-1=40 What would be the excuse for these 40 people and if I had to guess, I would guess that they do not have a payment plan in place for 2010. The County Treasurer claimed the reason they were not in the newspaper (or bid off to the County Commission as a result) was because they were on the payment plan but so were 103 others people who must have gotten their names printed in the first printing? I mean really, do you see why we have laws now to prevent this kind of thing from happening. To try to convince me that the County Treasurer was acting in the best interest of the taxpayers, well, you would have a better chance of convincing me the world was flat!
Mark, I had theory on this. Those not listed originally in the newspaper as delinquent may have been the ones that revolved always remaining unpaid until after their redemption period. It was not so much being in the newspaper that made a difference but being”bid off” to the County Commissioners where the listing would be held and questioned as to whether or not those people had paid up by the end of the redemption period of Sept 1 – to 3 years later – Sept 1 that year. That is what actually created the paper trail as to who was not paying and would be subject to auction. See it was the “bid off” where the list of names published moved to the possession of the County Commission that was being avoided yet not everyone on the payment plan avoided that demise. Is that not an interesting theory? I am trying to get caught up on my personal endeavors which have suffered due to trying to get information on this important issue but I have had this on my mind for some time and this seemed to be the exact moment to bring it forward. What do you think? It is definitely possible and high likely?