Property-tax bills late in Linn — again

CEDAR RAPIDS - For a second consecutive September, Linn County has not sent out all its property-tax bills to property owners by the Sept. 1 tax due date.

The Linn County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday said its office and the treasurer's and auditor's offices have received dozens of phone calls from property owners wondering where the bills are.

Property-tax bills are not past due until Oct. 1, and Supervisor Linda Langston said the hope is that property owners who have not gotten bills will do so in the next week.

Owners of about 39,000 parcels of the 106,000 parcels in the county still are waiting for their tax bills, she said.

The supervisors blamed the problem on a Des Moines company that has the county contract to print the bills.

However, Supervisor Brent Oleson said the county treasurer's office, which sends out the bills, 'had dropped the ball.” He added that it should not have taken citizen complaints for the county to have realized it had a problem with the bills.

The county should have a way to check on how many bills have been mailed, he said, getting the tax bills out is 'a basic” county service that needs to be done correctly.

A year ago, Linn County was in the middle of changing a computer software program when the tax bills did not go out on time, Langston said.