County collects delinquent taxes
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The commissioners court also approved a resolution of support for state funding to help cover the county's cost of providing indigent defense.
The court anticipates getting $44,000 from the Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense, a figure that County Judge ...
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The commissioners court also approved a resolution of support for state funding to help cover the county's cost of providing indigent defense.
The court anticipates getting $44,000 from the Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense, a figure that County Judge Don Pozzi said hasn't changed for years.
Yet the county's cost of providing the defense is about $650,000 a year.
Just over $948,000 have been collected by Victoria County's contract property tax collection agency over two years.
Jeff Rutledge, with Linebarger, Goggan, Blair and Sampson, said that figure covers the period from July 1, 2007, through June 30, 2009. It includes penalty and interest.
"Certainly, the collection of delinquent taxes is very important to the citizens of Victoria County," County Judge Don Pozzi said. "When you're talking about nearly a million dollars, you're talking a little less than 2.5 cents on the tax rate."
That is money that will go into the county's general fund to help pay the cost of keeping county government operating.
Rutledge said his firm's collection rate for a one-year period ending in June 2009 was up 8 percent, or double the previous year. That's an increase of nearly $36,800.
County Commissioner Kevin Janak said he has mixed emotions about the news, which was delivered in a report Monday to the commissioners court.
On one hand, it indicates Linebarger, Goggan, Blair and Sampson is doing a good job for the county. On the other, part of that increase could be due to people losing their homes because of the economy, he said.
"But if they didn't collect it, it wouldn't go into the general fund," Janak said. "Whatever they can collect for us, it truthfully helps us because the county is also hurting."
The report from Linebarger, Goggan, Blair and Sampson indicates there is still about $1.3 million in outstanding property taxes for 2008 and all previous years.
"I'm not surprised there's that much delinquent," Pozzi said. "I am somewhat surprised given the state of this economy we're in and have been in for the last year and a half or two years, that they were able to collect that amount of money."
