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May 21, 2005
Where Everybody Knows Your Name
I got a reminder of the benefits of living in a small town while I was in Marshall this week. First, a little background. One of the first things my dad insisted I do after becoming an attorney was to help him deed his property to my sister and me. Not that he's a big landowner or anything, but he wanted to go ahead & give us what little he had so we wouldn't have to mess with probate or anything when he & Mom passed. And a couple of years ago, when his mom & dad passed away, he gave me the 20 acres he inherited from them since it basically controls the access to my other property.
This year, I happened to look over my property tax bill a bit more closely than usual, and noticed that those 20 acres didn't appear to be listed. Hmmm, that's strange I thought. So while I was at my parents', I mentioned I needed the phone number for the tax collector's office. After I explained why, my dad suggested I just stop by the courthouse on my way home.
Wow. Am I ever glad I did.
The clerk started digging around in the computer records to see why I hadn't gotten a tax bill for the 20 acres. She stopped, frowned and said "Now that can't be right." Holy shit, it was listed as "Certified", which meant it was to be turned over to the state for a tax auction.
Now this lady has known me all my life, and knows my parents well, so she dug around some more and found the problem. They'd switched to a new computer program recently, she said, and it had misread my dad's records. My dad, you see, is exempt from paying real estate taxes. Instead of reading him as exempt, the program had interpreted his record as delinquent during the period he had held the property before passing it on to me. And since apparently the property wasn't included in my last year's tax bill, I hadn't paid the taxes on it either.
Nervously I asked her how we could fix it....thinking in my panic it was going to be some incredibly involved process because I'm used to the big city bureaucrat attitude of whatever the computer says is sacrosanct.
Well, she said, if you can pay at least the overdue taxes, I think I can fix the rest.
With a sigh of relief, I told her I would write her a check for whatever amount would make me current. Just give me a figure.
She did a little clicking and editing. I cut her two checks, one for the delinquent taxes and one for this year's bill. Voila! Problem solved. And, she moved everything so all the property was listed under the same name so next year I will get one bill for everything.
Whew! Was I ever glad that happened down home instead of here in Fayetteville. I can't even imagine how difficult that would've been to correct in some big city's system. And I was rilly, rilly glad I'd taken my dad's advice and stopped by to check on it in person.
Once again, Father knows best***.
Of course I had to call my dad after I got home and tease him about losing the farm for delinquent taxes. He was really glad I got it all corrected, he would've been absolutely mortified to see his name listed on the delinquent tax list in the local newspaper this fall.
We were teasing each other about it and he said "I would've sure hated to have lost those big pine trees." (There's a stand of pine on the property that for some reason my dad just loves.) I replied "To hell with the pines. I was more worried about losing the gate." (Meaning access to my adjoining property)
He got a big laugh out of that.
And yeah, the whole thing made me really homesick. It would be nice to live again in a place where everybody's family or close to it. And where everybody leaves you the hell alone....especially the local government.
Posted by Rita at May 21, 2005 07:06 AM
Comments
That was a little close. Glad you didn't lose the land.
Posted by: Keith at May 21, 2005 10:50 AM