An error in the Valley View School District is causing people to get higher bills than they owe.<\/p>\n
LACKAWANNA COUNTY, Pa. \u2014 The phones have been ringing off the hooks, and the line of homeowners is only growing at the tax collector’s office in Archbald. “All day, this has been happening for two days,” said Katie Grogan Noldy, Archbald Tax Collector.<\/p>\n
That’s because officials are telling people not to pay the bills they received.<\/p>\n
“We’re having a problem with the taxes; do not pay your school taxes in the Valley View School District yet,” said Grogan Noldy.<\/p>\n
A programming error sent out incorrect school tax bills to property owners in the Valley View School District.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is the first year the district has had to calculate a new millage rate after Lackawanna County’s first reassessment in nearly 60 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Valley View’s business manager, Corey Castellani, says the program used the wrong number to calculate the taxes. “The program picked up the total assessed value, instead of the taxable assessed value, so what that caused was our millage rate to be a little higher than it should’ve been.”<\/p>\n
The error pushed up the millage rate by nearly a full point, meaning homeowners should be getting a corrected bill with a lower amount than what was originally due, something those in Archbald are happy to hear.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“In this area, we’ll take every win we can get,” said Tim Bachak.<\/p>\n
But even with that correction, people may still pay more than previous years.<\/p>\n
District officials say the countywide reassessment shifted more of the tax burden onto homeowners as many large commercial properties saw their assessed values and tax bills drop.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s been really frustrating. Some of the house values have not been appropriate. The appeals process can be a bit tedious. But it’s nice to hear we’re going to get some money back,” said Bachak.<\/p>\n
“A lot of our larger taxpayers were reduced, so that pushes the burden over on the other taxpayers, and that’s why there are such drastic increases in some of these taxes,” said Castellani.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For those who pay through an escrow account or through their mortgage lender. “If somebody already sent their statement to their bank or their mortgage lender, you’re going to have to contact them and send the new bill. If it’s somebody that gets the bills, or the amounts from the tax collectors, not to worry, I didn’t send any out yet,” said Grogan Noldy.<\/p>\n
For the stacks of checks sitting on the tax collector’s desk, those will be returned to those who already paid. The rest of you can keep your checkbook closed for now.<\/p>\n
“What’re you going to do? But you are going to have to pay them eventually, but right now, don’t pay the amount you got. It’s going to be in your favor. So it’s a good thing,” said Grogan Noldy.<\/p>\n
The new bills at the correct rate have been processed and are being sent out. Homeowners should expect to see the correct tax bill in the mail in the next few days.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An error in the Valley View School District is causing people to get higher bills than they owe.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-260737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}