City still waiting for tax money owed

The city of Plains is still waiting for money that was accidentally over paid to the Plains Library by the Sanders County Treasurer.

With the impending new year, it would now seem that the small town will be waiting until business resumes as normal after the first week of January.

Speaking with Sanders County Commissioner Glen Magera, he along with other Commissioners, was unaware that the tax bungle was still an issue for the town.

Magera said that though there is not a lot of “pull” that the commissioners can use due to the rules of local government positions, he and his counterparts will endeavor to look further into the matter when they reconvene in 2018.

Though Plains was not the only town within Sanders County that had fallen to the bungle of the library levy, Thompson Falls has found a way to transfer the money back to city funds thus ending their stresses.

Plains, however, is still awaiting the time to receive the money they are owed that was unfortunately the over-payment which was sent to the library many months ago.

Due to the confusing tax bungle this shortage of funds turns to be a double-edged sword for the small town as there are projects impending and to effectively close out the fiscal year budgets is just one of the many tasks they are unable to complete.

“We’ve attempted to contact the country treasurer [Carol Turk], and we just cannot make contact,” said Plains City Clerk Cathy Emmett.

Sanders County Clerk/Recorder Nichol Scribner advised that she was unaware that the situation had not been closed out. She also stated that she believed what had occurred is when the refunds were being issued to the citizens for over taxing, the County possibly did not take into account how it would impact the cities.

Though without looking into the matter more in depth, Scribner said she was still gathering the information to understand better how the matter could be resolved.

Not only has the city made numerous attempts to contact Turk, they had also set up a meeting in hopes of settling the matter but it was canceled at the last minute due to conflicting timing on Turks part.

As one mayor says goodbye to his voted seat, it looks as though new mayor Dan Rowan will have to tackle the ‘tax bungle’ straight out of the gate as he is due to be sworn in on December 27,2017.

Attempts by the Valley Press to contact County Treasurer Carol Turk for this story were unsuccessful.