Minutes 11/08/1983 - Laserfiche WebLink

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') ( ;~ TUESDAY NOVEMBER 8, 1983 /" on a lot had not been updated. The second request, considered the fol- lowing month, was the first submitted by a taxpayer. Upon the recommen- dation of the City Attorney, the Council waived the penalty and interest. In a companion action, and as authority for the handling of similar cases in the future, the Council unanimously adopted the following ordinance: WHEREAS, Section 58-847 of the CODE OF VIRGINIA (1950, and as amended) provides that the governing body of any city may provide by ordinance for the waiver of the penalty and interest for the failure to pay a tax if such failure was not in any way the fault of the tax- payer; now, therefore, - BE IT ORDAINED by the Council of the City of Martins- ville, Virginia, in regular session held this tenth day of November, 1981, that the penalty and interest for failure to pay local real estate taxes be, and the same hereby are, waived if such failure was not in any way the fault of the taxpayer; and BE IT FURTHER ORDAINED by said Council that any tax- payer seeking hereunder a waiver of the penalty and interest for failure to pay a real estate tax shall have the burden of showing that such failure was not in any way the fault of such taxpayer. Forty-one requests for waiver of penalty and interest have been presented to City Council since October of 1981. All but eight of these have been considered in calendar year 1983. Of the total requests, 34 were approved and five denied. In the other two cases, the Council granted a partial waiver. Since more than one parcel or tax year was involved, the penalty and interest was waived for three out of a total of five years. The Council has approved eleven requests contrary to staff recommendations. This includes the two requests just noted. A staff recommendation was not clearly made on eight of the requests that were approved. There has been increasing disagreement on the cases considered most recently. Of the seven requests considered since late July, Council has acted against the staff recommendation on five occasions. Four of these five cases were remarkably similar to two others considered in March, when Council agreed with the staff recommendation that waiver of penalty and interest should not be approved. All of these cases involved a widow who inherited property on which taxes were delinquent while she and/or her husband owned it, with at least some history of late payment of taxes in other years. Once taxes are delinquent over three years, they are referred to the Clerk's Office. Thus, a total of almost $22,000 in taxes, penalty and interest on 451 parcels owed for the 1979-80 tax year was reported to that office on June 30. While there is some overlap with the 405 tax cases already on record, it is safe to estimate that there are now 700-850 cases more than three years old that require attention. With each new fiscal year, another group of cases will be added.