Feb 28, 2003 By Paul Sunyak 3 min read

Luzerne Township property owners should check next week’s mail for a new real estate tax bill – and all county property owners will get an extra month to pay county and municipal taxes at the discount, face and penalty rates. Fayette County’s chief assessor said Wednesday that Luzerne Township property owners should disregard the 2003 real estate tax bill already mailed to them, as it contained errors regarding fire hydrant surcharges.

“Throw that one in the garbage can,” advised James A. Hercik, CPE.

Instead, Luzerne property owners should look for a new and correct tax bill that has a March 1 date at the top, said Hercik, who added, “That (March 1 date) is how you can tell the good bill from the bad bill.”

Additionally, Hercik said that in an attempt to unify the payment deadlines, all county taxpayers should add a month to all deadlines listed on their bills. For example:

? The discount period, listed as Feb. 1 through March 31, is now March 1 through April 30.

? The face period, listed as April 1 through May 31, is now May 1 through June 30.

? The penalty period, listed as June 1 through Dec. 31, is now July 1 through Dec. 31. The end date for the penalty period, which coincides with the end of the year, is the only date that remains unchanged.

These changes also affect the deadlines for paying the county’s $5 per capital tax, added Hercik.

The backing up of the deadlines is rooted in the fact that some tax collectors received and mailed their notices around Feb. 1 while others weren’t able to do that until Feb. 15, said Hercik.

Printing software problems that required a reprinting of approximately 30,000 of the county’s 80,000 tax bills caused a delay in tax bill mailing in about a dozen municipalities, said Hercik. However, none of those errors affected the assessed value portion of the bill, he said.

“This was strictly a billing software problem. It had nothing to do with the reassessment values,” said Hercik. He added that Cole Layer Trumble has agreed to reimburse the county for any cost overruns associated with billing problems, which are largely inevitable in the switch to any new computer system.

“We are working with CLT to work out bugs in the billing process,” said Hercik.

Because state law requires a minimum 60-day period for the discount and face value payment periods, and in an attempt to give all property owners the same deadline, Hercik said the county commissioners voted to back the payment periods up by one month.

“Taxpayers are still getting the proper amount of time. We’re required by statute to give at least two months at discount,” said Hercik.

The county’s tax collectors are not at fault in the need to rework the payment calendar, said Hercik, who explained that the commissioners took that move to put everyone under the same deadline umbrella.

“We wanted a uniform collection period throughout the county. If wouldn’t be proper for one tax collector to collect discount up to one date, (and) another to have a different date,” he said.

Regarding the special situation in Luzerne Township, Hercik said a “data base error” caused a “major calculation error” in fire hydrant charges, which was discovered only after tax collector Andrea Kovach mailed the bills.

“The local tax collector was not at fault; the error came from the (computer) data base,” said Hercik. “Andrea Kovach has been working very hard with our office to correct this with as little confusion to the taxpayers as possible.”