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.