Word says she didn't know she owed taxes on Lamasco; bill now paid

EVANSVILLE — No, school board member Amy Word didn’t pay building property taxes on Lamasco Bar & Grill. But no, Word said after paying up Thursday, it wasn’t on purpose.

It was all a misunderstanding wrapped in a plat code oddity, inside a county address records snafu. There’s a missed text message too, but that wasn’t part of the explanation. More on that later.

The Vanderburgh County Treasurer’s Office said earlier this week the building property at 1331 W. Franklin St. — Lamasco’s address — was more than $7,500 in arrears on its county property taxes. And it was. The county did not receive the spring or previous fall's installments of property taxes on the structure, which has an assessed value of $211,500.

But Word went to the treasurer’s office Thursday after the Courier & Press reported the unpaid taxes earlier in the day, paid what was past due and explained herself, the treasurer’s office said.

Word told the Courier & Press at the end of the day Thursday that her reasons for not paying the taxes when they were due boiled down to one thing: She didn’t know they were due.

It's a little complicated.

The personal property taxes of any applicant for a liquor license have to be current when the individual applies for the license or renewal of an existing license, said Darby Trible, chief deputy treasurer of Vanderburgh County. And Word was paid up on those personal property taxes when she applied for renewal of Lamasco’s liquor license on April 13.

“But she assumed it included everything, was her explanation to me,” Trible said. “She assumed that, that included (Lamasco’s property taxes). Therefore, when she was told that, ‘Yes, it’s paid, you can renew your license,’ she didn’t ask about the real estate (taxes).”

Word confirmed that account of her explanation.

There's something else: Word told the treasurer’s office Thursday she couldn’t make the property tax payments because she couldn’t find her information online, which was how she had always paid previously.

Trible said that explanation is plausible because Word had recently purchased a small real estate parcel that was adjacent to the Lamasco property. Old plat codes were deleted to create a new code to account for the additional acreage. But it wasn’t done in time.

“It was basically old codes that the system was not recognizing because it takes awhile,” Trible said. “It usually falls into place the year following, so the system may not have recognized the old codes.”

Word said she wanted to replat the property because she was getting too many tax bills.

“But when you do that, it’s like it’s a new entity,” she said. “There is no past tax history because it’s a brand new plat. Last fall, it didn’t exist because it wasn’t assessed yet.”

Word figured it would all be sorted out in time for her to “get one big bill and pay whatever was in arrears,” but that never happened.

For one thing, there was a problem with the U.S. mail, too.

The county tax bill mailed to Word this past spring was returned, Trible said.

“It was returned as ‘return to sender, unable to forward,’” the deputy treasurer said. “We try to find a good address once a bill is returned, and we usually send them back out if we can find a good address. However, we didn’t have a good address.”

Word sold her previous home in March and moved into a new residence in April, she said — and she thought all the departments of county government that needed to know about it, did.

“I applied for a homestead (tax credit to one county agency),” she said. “So when I sent (the paperwork) and said, ‘I’m living here now,’ I assumed everyone knew I was living there. But apparently, that’s a different department.”

The story has a happy ending, Word said.

The plats and codes are updated and streamlined, her address is in the hands of every county agency who needs it and the back taxes are paid, Word said. It was just a weird confluence of circumstance and bad luck, she said, that produced an official representation that she was delinquent on taxes.

There’s still that missed text message, though.

The Courier & Press told Word in a text Tuesday that it would report her announcement that she is trying to sell Lamasco. The text asked for her response to the appearance of “past due property taxes” and the denial last month of Lamasco’s alcoholic beverage license.

The newspaper followed up with a phone message. Word did not acknowledge the inquiries.

On Thursday, she messaged the Courier & Press on the same text thread to report the treasurer’s office could explain that the paper’s original story was inaccurate.

But Word told the newspaper Thursday she never received the Tuesday text mentioning past due property taxes. She produced a screenshot of the text stream that did not include that message.

“Obviously, if I had seen that, I’d have been like, ‘What the hell is he talking about?’” she said with a laugh.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Word says she didn't know she owed taxes on Lamasco; bill now paid