DEAR EDITOR:

Imagine your embarrassment when your name erroneously appears in the Tribune Chronicle as being delinquent in property taxes — especially when the county treasurer never contacted you regarding the supposed delinquency.

I don’t currently receive the Tribune, and if it were not for a relative telling me that I appeared in the delinquent property taxes list, I would not have known about the supposed delinquency until the new tax bills arrived. The treasurer makes it impossible for a taxpayer to correct (or even know about) a treasurer’s error until the treasurer publishes an incorrect and embarrassing public delinquency list.

I have proof that my second half of 2023 taxes were paid timely by my financial institution. The treasurer attempted to post my payment to the wrong parcel which belonged to another taxpayer.

Those taxes had been paid, so the treasurer sent my check to the taxpayer of the wrong parcel indicating that taxes had already been paid. I have been attempting to correct the treasurer’s error since the third week of November. My financial institution immediately issued a replacement payment to the treasurer, and I submitted the required form to have the interest and penalty removed from my tax account.

Now it is late January, and the treasurer has not corrected the error. I have sent many emails requesting a status update on my requested correction but have received absolutely no response from the treasurer’s office.

So, for your own protection, be sure to find a way to audit your real estate tax records to protect against errors by the treasurer going undetected until incorrectly listed publicly.

GARY ENGSTROM

Howland