Published: July 02, 2009 09:54 pm      

Property tax bills in the mail

First payment due by Aug. 20

Cass County homeowners should expect to receive their property tax bills in the next few days.

Treasurer Dawn Conner confirmed that the bills were taken to the post office on Thursday morning with the first expected to be delivered today.

With the July 4 holiday this weekend, though, she said that some of the bills might not reach homeowners until early next week.

Conner said that unlike last year, there will be a two-payment schedule for bills in 2009. The treasurer said the first payment would be due on Aug. 20 and the second on Nov. 10.

Conner said that the state statute says that a minimum of 15 days notice is required for people to pay the bills but that she and Auditor Vaneen Ide felt that people would need more time.

“We had to request the dates, and we could have had Aug. 10,” Conner said. “But because we are back to a two-payment schedule we felt that including an extra 10 days was a fairer way of doing it.”

Conner noted that the county’s schedule for distributing the bills had been delayed beyond the state’s recommended time frame in each of the past five years. While this year’s bill are sent out earlier than in 2008 when homeowners were left with a sole November payment, the bills are slightly later than in 2007.

As more statutes have come down from the state, including annual assessed value reviews, it takes longer for the Department of Local Government Finance to calculate the county’s budget and as a result for the treasurer’s office to distribute the bills.

“Every piece of legislation puts more work on the county offices who are expected to complete that in the same amount of time,” she said.

• Kevin Smith is a staff writer at the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached at (574) 732-5148 or kevin.smith@pharostribune.com