Homeowners in Fulton will end up paying a little more money in taxes this year due to an accounting error by the Callaway County clerk Denise Hubbard.
Fulton officials held an emergency meeting Tuesday morning to discuss options for the city.
The city decided to keep the tax levy for this year instead of fixing it. The taxpayers will be reimbursed next tax season with a lower property tax.
“Everybody hates to overcharge anybody,” Callaway County District Commissioner Doc Kritzer said, “and have each person pay more than they should have.”
The mistake came when Hubbard picked the county’s tax levy instead of the city’s levy rate.
“I did make a mistake. I’m admitting it. I’m sorry that I made a mistake. I am working closely with the state auditors office to correct it,” Hubbard said “all we can do at this point is fix the mistake.”
According to Fulton’s Chief Financial Officer Kathy Holschlag the assessed valuation was off by around $4 million, which in turn resulted in the certified tax rate being higher than it should have been.
“It will yield an additional an additional, I think it’s around $27,500 city wide which translates into $4.46 for a citizen who owns a property with a market value of $100,000,” Holschlag said.
It all started in July when Kritzer said the city of Fulton had received paperwork about its 2016 tax levies but the paperwork appeared to be wrong.
The City of Fulton says they then contacted Callaway County clerk Hubbard who recalculated the tax levies and returned the paperwork to the city.
According to Krizer the tax paperwork went back and forth between the city of Fulton and Hubbard three times before receiving the latest paperwork in August.
The incorrect tax information was sent to both Fulton School District and the city of Fulton.
“The problem is the county clerk never responded to the city of Fulton’s requests for an explanation,” Kritzer said, “and we couldn’t get the clerk to sit down with us.”
After the city said they couldn’t reach Hubbard they reached out to the county commissioner Kritzer for help.
According to Hubbard though she wasn’t at fault in this situation.
“As far as I knew I had responded to all of their requests,” Hubbard said, “they were given pro forma with all that information on there, the numbers and everything and they voted and signed off on it.”
Kritzer said it was too late to redo all the paperwork for this year’s taxes, which need to be completed by the last week of October.
“In talking with the state auditor’s office they said that the city had the choice on what to do with it. They could either keep the levy rate the way it is this year and fix it on next years levy rate,” Hubbard said, “or they could fix it now as long as they did it this week.”