This is in wolcott. Our town clerk claims to never have received any of the taxes that were paid from escrow this year for almost half the year. The town raked in fees from the escrows accounts. As one of the people who was affected by this I spent a lot of time on the phone with the escrow company and they thought this was strange. The town clerk has acted as though this is normal. The town report this year says otherwise.

I do find this odd. Maybe submit your situation to the office of the state auditor so someone at an oversight level will look into it sooner rather than later.

https://auditor.vermont.gov/about-state-auditors-office

> The town auditor plays a vital role in preserving the democratic nature of Vermont’s local government by ensuring that local officials are accountable for their expenditures of the taxpayers’ money. It is the auditor’s job to review the accounts of local officials and report the findings directly to the taxpayers for review. Because this report is presented only days before town meeting, the statutory scheme envisions that if the taxpayers do not like what the auditors’ report indicates about how the officials have spent the taxpayers’ money; the officials will be voted out of office.

Sounds like time for a new town clerk. And maybe a call to the State Auditor's office...

Something is fishy here.... definitely raise this up the flag pole

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Have you compared this against annual reports from previous years?

Just based on this document, the amount of outstanding delinquent taxes at the end of the year looks high, but not that much higher than the previous year. Looks like there was about $7,850 in delinquent 2020-2021 taxes still outstanding at the end of 2021. Not that far off from $10,300.

Blame Covid. It’s the government’s answer to any question nowadays.

Yea you can see from other years this is not normal. The amount reported delinquent this year was really high. They collected it eventually, as shown in this chart.

This is not showing all time delinquent taxes for each year, but:

In the first column, amount of taxes still due from the indicated tax year after their due date as of Jan. 1st, 2022.

In the second column, amount of delinquent taxes for the indicated tax year collected in calendar year 2022.

In the third column, amount of delinquent taxes still due for the indicated tax year as of Dec. 31st, 2022.

This is a very poorly designed table, and I understand your confusion. Also, I work in municipal finance, and I appreciate you doing your due diligence to hold your public officials to account. G-d knows my exposure to crappy graphics is the only reason I have an inkling of what is going on here, lol.

I would encourage you to dig up town reports from the last 5 years and compare the data in them. I hope you will find that this is not astronomically high, but who knows. It does look at least a little high. No clerk worth his or her salt is going to begrudge you looking into town finances.

One other thing: at the office where I work, we do not go tracking down escrow payments that don’t show up on time, because it is not strictly our responsibility to keep track of which tax accounts are being paid through escrow. I would have a stern conversation with your lender and consider asking Wolcott’s delinquent tax collector if some of the fees on your tax bill could be waived given that you thought it was being paid by escrow.

Not in my town.

It looks to me as if outstanding taxes for 2020-21 were $1,859 and for ‘21-22 they were $10,325. That’s certainly a big difference from ‘20-21 as well as the prior 2 years! This is definitely concerning. Something odd is going on.

That is delinquent taxes for those years that were STILL outstanding as of Dec. 31st, 2022.

This quote is referring to how town officials are spending collected taxes, not how the tax collector is handling the collections & bookkeeping. Nevertheless, this situation absolutely warrants having an auditor look at.

The fees are all paid by the escrow company. All escrow payments are all grouped together and sent to the town as one payment. The town claims they never received that payment, which represents the large amount that was not collected and then was. The town collected a bunch of fees from the escrow company. Seemingly no harm to people in the town, but still fishy. Everything was paid eventually and never cost me more. Just seems really weird and convenient for the town this all happened.

So, if the clerk is claiming not to have received any of the taxes from escrow for the entire year, wouldn’t that mean multiple mortgage lenders just happened to screw up the escrow payments on all the mortgages that happened to be in your town? If I’m understanding you correctly, that seems highly unlikely.

When you say the town “raked in fees from the escrow accounts”, are you saying that the town clerk collected late fees from all of the lenders for properties in your town for nearly 6 months of late payments? Again, this seems highly suspect.

As a town resident you should have a right to question this and the town auditor should definitely be looking into it (although if it’s like our town, audits take months to happen. 2021 audits just happened in January of 2023).

Maybe timelines have changed?

Interesting. I’ve admittedly never been asked to handle escrow payments, but I’m gonna ask my coworkers about them tomorrow. To be clear, I don’t work in Wolcott, but in one of the state’s larger municipalities.

I would still encourage you to look at previous years’ reports, even if a city employee told you that. Sometimes city employees should be directing questions to the appropriate coworker rather than trying to answer them themselves, if that makes sense.

Your Clerk’s office should have copies of every recent annual report.

What is the problem. It looks accurate to me. You have delinquent taxes and want to see the amounts due go down each year. Lots of people miss the final payment and usually pay up right away which makes the b alance due drop fairly quickly.

I was waiting for someone to point that out :)

Nonetheless I felt it was still relevant.

It isn't odd at all. Some of the delinquent taxes have been paid off in prior years. $10,325 in delinquent for the most recent taxes year, based on 3 mil collected is very reasonable

This^. As a municipal finance person, I can tell you that the vast majority of those “delinquent taxes collected” for the 2021-2022 tax year were collected in the few days after they were due.

Is your username some kind of homage to Robert Moses, the infamous shitstain on urban development?

I was looking at our Town Report, and I do remember seeing delinquent taxes listed in previous years, with the property owners' names given, which I always thought was so embarrassing...I did not see any delinquent taxes listed this year, and didn't know if this was eliminated, or simply there weren't any delinquent taxes owed.

nichard_rixon was taken lol

Oh mannnn, another crooked town clerk?! It’s so sad what people think they can get away with. I hope it’s an innocent mistake, but yiikes

The town clerk in weybridge was skimming money this way for years and years.. I think it was over 40k in like ten years or less.

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Did you all know that one shitty software and tax company has a monopoly on all of the towns in Vermont? They are the only game in town, and they actually have a lot of power over what happens in towns. Every town clerk with only a few exceptions uses their shitty software to run their towns.

Side note, anyone ever heard of Victory Vermont?

I'd be curious to see the details of any payments or deposits from around the time that taxes were due, and also around anytime that they were eventually paid. This seems very peculiar to me. (I work in mortgage)

User name checks out

Maybe I’m looking at it wrong, but it seems to me that the $ outstanding in each row is for each fiscal year, not a running total. The total outstanding delinquent for all 4 years is indicated at the bottom: $15,676. So the outstanding delinquent $ for ‘21-‘22 is around 5x what it was each of the previous 3 years, isn’t it? That doesn’t seem odd?

As for “based on 3 mil collected”, I would imagine that the total amount of taxes levied by the town didn’t change drastically from prior years.

People paying at the last minute each year shouldn’t make the outstanding amount for the last fiscal year suddenly 5x higher than it was each of the prior 3 fiscal years.

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Not sure if this helps at all but in my town (Londonderry) the delinquent tax amount is really high for 2022 compared to 2021 and prior. I guess because of the influx of people that moved in or maybe not? Total amount for 2022 was almost 192k. In 2021 it was 43k. That's quite a jump.

Hey - some of us olds like irony ok? ;-)

You are reading the table wrong. The outstanding delinquent taxes in the right column are as of Dec. 31st, 2022, not as of the last day of the calendar year when the taxes referred to were due. Delinquent taxes listed here from tax year 2020-2021 were at least 1.5 years late by Dec. 31st, 2022. This is why I’m encouraging OP to please do more research into the status of previous years’ taxes.

There’s no reason you couldn’t request this info from the town. It might take them a minute to redact info on state pre-bates. Just submit a public information request or go to the Clerk’s office and ask in person.

I’m seriously going to delete this Reddit account if I have to explain one more time that I do not and did not like Robert Moses but simply thought it was a little silly & a little goofy. And nichard_rixon was taken

The property tax credit is actually a pre applied rebate which hits your tax account before the first quarterly payment is due. That is, as long as your income taxes and homestead declaration have been filed on time.

Does your town clerk suddenly drive a Mercedes?

I don't think it suggests that you're an eminent domain supporter. Just someone who knows 20th century history and is also a little bit goofy. And it's better than dricky_tick anyhow.

Something is rotten in Denmark or in this case, Wolcott. Multiple mortgage companies would have to have the same problem in not issuing payments. And since when does a town collect fees from an escrow account? That's nuts.

Based on the two towns I've paid taxes in for the last 20+ years, I don't think it's odd. The delinquent tax amount varies a lot from year to year. Fun fact, and maybe this still happens, we used to print the names of everyone who owed and how much.

Keep the name, it's great! Joke 'em if they can't take a... And yes, I concur most delinquent taxes are paid a shortly after they are delinquent.

Which one?

> we used to print the names

Still do in my town. Fucked up thing is some who are on that list are filthy rich and even a few large corps as well.

Thanks for clarifying