County's sloppiness just cost you a chunk of change

The Rensselaer County Real Property Tax Services department is spending thousands of dollars to tell property owners in the City of Troy that the department screwed up.

And, guess whose money they're spending to do it? That's right. The same people who pay to support Rensselaer County when they send in the checks for their property tax bills.

Here's what happened:

Bill Film, director of the aforementioned county entity, has sent postcards to all Troy property owners, informing them that although the amount of taxes they are being charged this year is correct the percent of change from the prior year is incorrect, and the county is the one that gave the city the wrong info to send to us.

Each postcard cost whatever it takes for the paper, the printing, the address labeling and the employee-power to handle the chore -- plus 34 cents postage per piece.

I don't know precisely how many property owners the city has, but for the sake of argument let's say it is in the 14,000 range once you back out all of the exempt parcels. Multiply that number by the items I just listed and correcting the error blew a solid $5,000.

Not a huge sum, by any stretch of the imagination, but when anyone wastes even a dollar of my money, I object. And in this instance, our money was, indeed, wasted because of the necessity of correcting an error that should have been caught in the proofreading process.

Rensselaer County, except for Frank Merola's excellent County Clerk's office, doesn't do much for its residents, especially compared to the cost of its care and feeding which is a considerable burden on all property owners. I don't think it is too much to ask to get a basic thing like a tax bill correct. Do you?

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