GREAT FALLS — During Tuesday’s regularly-scheduled Cascade County Commission meeting, one of the agenda items was a motion to cancel more than $650,000 in unpaid property taxes that have been delinquent for five or more years and have had a lien attached in the last three years.
The motion passed unanimously, but not without objections. Per Montana state law, the commission is required to cancel taxes for deficient properties included on a list provided by the county treasurer.
That didn’t sit well with Commissioner Joe Briggs: “I have a problem with just writing off debt and just let people skate. My understanding of the statute is we don’t have a choice.”
According to Paige Smith, property tax supervisor for the Cascade County Treasurer’s Office, the purpose of writing off the property taxes is so that they can get people to take a tax lien on the properties and eventually pay taxes. “We would recover some of that,” Smith said.
“The reality is that a lot of these properties will not change hands as a result of this action,” said Briggs. “We’ll just start accruing new unpaid taxes from the same scofflaws.”
Commissioner Jane Weber agreed: “I feel like these properties aren’t going to get back on the tax rolls, they’re just going to continue to accrue new taxes.”
The cancellation of delinquent taxes include real estate taxes in the amount of $640,155.95, mobile home taxes in the amount of $9,382.13, and personal property taxes in the amount of $5,247.56.
