By Brian Massie, A Watchman on the Wall
We sent the following email to Treasurer Michael Zuren and Auditor Chris Galloway:
Can you please tell us why all property tax bills do not go directly to all of the homeowners? We understand that those with a mortgage never see their statement detailing the taxes paid to each taxing authority. They only get a statement from their mortgage company stating that their monthly payment went up.
In our opinion, this is a reason that people do not understand the correlation of voting for a levy and not seeing the impact on their tax bill.
Lake County Treasurer Michael Zuren
Mr. Massie,
In Lake County approximately 40% of homeowners have their property taxes paid through their bank or mortgage company escrow account. Once the treasurer’s office is notified that the property tax bill is paid through an escrow account, the mailing address for the tax bill is changed to the responsible party.
If we mailed two tax bills for parcels being paid by an escrow account it would create a huge additional expense and an issue with duplicate payments (one from the homeowner and one from the bank/mortgage company responsible to pay the property taxes).
All property tax bills are available online and make great efforts to inform the public through news outlets when property tax bills are available. In the past 4 years, we have added 18,000 email addresses from Lake County tax payers that now have their property tax bills emailed directly to them (this service is available to anyone – it’s free). We also offer to email tax bills directly to any homeowner that calls the treasurer’s office.
Lake County Auditor Chris Galloway
Brian:
You dislike the years of unallocated and double payments that never found a home. Imagine the number of double payments and extra refunds needed, and issues that Mike’s office would be trying to manage if bills were issued to two entities – the bank and homeowner. What a mess. Lake is no different than every other county – the bill goes to the designated entity – designated by the property owner. Also, what a waste of money to print, envelope and postage for a second round 30-40k bills, unnecessarily, twice a year.
Wanted to also respond to your question about past bills online you asked a week ago. What you see on my website is not static. It’s a pdf generated by live data. We don’t maintain static copies. Nor will I occupy server space for volumes of old bills. If a resident wants an old tax bill, Mike’s office may be able to retrieve it if requested bc it was part of an old file sent to the printer when they were generated. I don’t know how long he maintains those records, however.
Chris
LFC Comments: We thank both Treasurer Zuren and Auditor Galloway for their quick response.
Auditor Galloway mentioned that I was unhappy about the “unallocated” funds and “double payments”. He was referring to the “Surplus Over” account I discovered back in 2021, where millions of overpaid property taxes were held by the County for decades. The discovery was not as a result of a complex algorithm developed by me. (Note: I am not sure what a complex algorithm looks like!) It took me five minutes to review a document detailing the cash held in the various County funds. I was not happy that it happened. I was unhappy that many elected officials had the opportunity for decades to return the money to the taxpayers and did not! No one was looking out for the financial interests of the average citizens!
For those that want to review their property taxes, here is a link to the Auditor’s website. You enter in your address, and you will get all of the information the government has on your property. Remember, you do not own your home, you merely rent from the government.
https://auditor.lakecountyohio.gov/search/commonsearch.aspx?mode=realprop
Categories: Lake, Real Estate Taxes, Uncategorized