Many folks began to call my office to inform me of this as they usually take advantage of the split payment option and not receiving these statements makes it difficult to manage this system. In all honesty, I am possibly the biggest procrastinator when it comes to paying my property taxes, so I usually am searching for my statements or going to the tax office to get a statement a few weeks before the taxes are due. As a result of that, and the fact that the Nurse usually gets the mail, I had not noticed that the tax statements had not come out yet. Once I was notified by some of you, I began to discuss this with our Tax Assessor, Melissa Fritz, and I found a myriad of reasons for the delay. My understanding is that the problems come from a mix of software issues and some questions that arose from some of the audits conducted as part of the change overs in both the Appraisal District and the Tax Assessor’s offices. After discussing this with officials in other counties, they expressed that this is most definitely unfortunate, but not entirely unheard of with the changeover in both the Tax Appraisal office and the Tax Assessor’s office along with only being in year two of a significant software changeover. As the County Judge, I do not have control over how another office conducts business, but I can work with the department head and the other elected officials to ease the burdens on everyone. First off, if you want to make split payments then you will need to go to the Tax Assessor’s office and request the payment amount so you can get that payment ready. I understand that most people get their statement in October and are able to plan for that payment, so after discussing all of this with the Tax Assessor, it was determined that we should be able to go into the tax office and get the split payment amount so that we can make the first of those split payments by the last day of November. I understand that this delay on the tax bills could be problematic for some folks wanting to make split payments and after discussing things with our Tax Assessor and our attorney, we are prepared to work with folks as the need arises to make sure everyone has an opportunity to get their split payments in. According to state law, we cannot adjust the due dates on accepting split payments in property taxes, however, we can, and we will work with folks to help them get their November 30th split payments taken care of and waive any fines or interest that would normally be associated with late payments that might be caused by this inconvenience. Again, if you plan to make split payments you can go to the Tax Assessor’s office and get your split payment amount so that you can make arrangements to get your split payment taken care of. The Tax Assessor’s staff can look it up there and give you the amount. If you don’t make split payments, then you should be fine and have your statements out in the next few weeks. In closing, while this is most definitely an inconvenience, please know that it is being rectified and should not be repeated in the future. Occasionally a confluence of events merge to create an unavoidable issue such as we are seeing this year, and we have to adapt to them and do what we can to make things work out for everyone. After looking at all the options, this is the best solution possible for this year and the Tax Assessor’s office will help out in whatever way they can to make this as trouble-free as possible.