[Marcy Wheatley]

#1594

What do counties do with their returned mail?

In the past, this office has tried to find updated addresses. With many of us new staff and some not knowing many residents, notices have been mailed out again and I fear to wrong people. We have had some phone calls with people saying they are not the correct address and are worried about us sending a tax bill to them. I know others have been sent to correct addresses as people don’t update their mailing address.

I am just wondering if it is worth my staff’s time and postage again to send the returned notices.

[Sheila Reiner]

#1595

Good topic! We have gone around and around on this a few times in my office. Ultimately we decided to mark the account that the notice was undeliverable and recycle!

[Lane Iacovetto]

#1596

I do not re-mail notices, it’s too expensive! I will email them though!

We scan returned mail into the Tyler account. If the yellow sticker has an updated address we update it. If not, we research the best we can. After 3 returns with no address update, we mark the account “No Print Tax Bill”. To research addresses, I use TLOxp (a people finder that provides email addresses), Secretary of State Office website and also Facebook(a lot)! ..Check with your Sheriff’s Office to see if you can piggyback on to their people finder software subscriptions.

If we find a match I email this message out:

Dear Routt County Taxpayer,

The tax notices, mailed to the billing address on file, was returned to our office as undeliverable by the post office.

If you are not the owner of this property, please also contact our office so that we can clear that up in our files. While we have been pretty lucky in finding the correct property owner when mail is returned, we sometimes miss. Sorry for this inconvenience.

Please let us know the address you would like tax notices sent to in the future by submitting the form online at https://www.co.routt.co.us/FormCenter/Treasurer-16/Change-Your-Address-52

Billing Address on File:

[Lane Iacovetto]

#1597

I wanted to add… The NEW TD-1000 form that the Assessor’s Office collects during property conveyance has an area for owners email address and phone number, these have been incredibly helpful. It specifically says, “Contact information is kept confidential, for County Assessor and Treasurer use only, to contact buyer with questions regarding this form, property valuation, or property tax information.”

Here is the link to that new form:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RqMl69babkLx21B3UeaHIU6D3wzUR95k/view?,authuser=0

Make sure that your Assessor’s Office is entering this information into the tax account!! They may not use the information but it is really helpful for our offices!

[Sheryl Hewlett]

#1598

If we receive a return tax notice with the yellow sticker and a forwarding address, we will update the address in our system and re-mail. If we do not have a forwarding address, we will double check the Assessor’s site and look at the reports The Masters Touch sends us after printing our notices. We also verify with our elections department. They will provide us with a list of voters in Elbert County, and sometimes we find the address that way.

I’m a little leery of trying to find addresses on the internet, but we do the best we can. We just hope the tax payers call in inquiring about their notice and we can get the updated mailing address that way. We file alphabetically the return notices in a box. We keep them for a year.

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