August 23, 2016
By Paul Joseph, Paragon News Director –
Sayre Public Schools received much of the proceeds of a $100-thousand dollar error. Unfortunately, they’ll need to give it back.
The error came from the double assessment of a gas and storage company in Indiana that only came to light recently in the Beckham County Assessor’s office who contacted the county treasurer.
County Treasurer Jennifer Drury told Beckham County Commissioners at a recent regular weekly meeting that the error occurred in 2015.
Public school districts in Oklahoma receive approximately 80% of county taxes, meaning the Sayre School District – in whose district the company owns property – received a large portion of the accidental double payment of taxes.
Compounding the problem is that there’s not enough money in the appropriate account to refund North Indiana Public Gas and Storage, who also failed to catch the error and paid their county tax bill, twice.
But, Drury told commissioners that thanks to a very frugal past treasurer, there’s enough money in a different account, the resale property fund account of delinquent taxes to more than fix the error. And, according to state law, that’s the proper account for it to come from when this happens.
Drury says the school district will need to reimburse the county part if not all of the amount and she won’t know the exact figure until the end of September.
She told commissioners that they’ve never had an accidental double assessment of this magnitude, but it’s not uncommon in other counties.
Drury says the resale account balance is around $200-thousand dollars before the payment error is made.
Sayre School Superintendent Todd Winn says it’s his understanding that the district’s receivables from the county will be short in August and September to help make the correction balance out.
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