The 2015 Garrett County Tax Sale will be held on Friday, May 1st in the Commissioners’ Public Meeting Room at the Garrett County Courthouse, 203 South 4th Street, Oakland, MD. To view a full list of properties currently scheduled for sale, click here: http://garrettcounty.org/resources/tax-office/pdf/2015-tax-sale.pdf
Category: tax sale
Unclaimed Prop. Listings Included in Today's Republican
Apr. 19, 2012
Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot wants Maryland residents to be on the lookout for his agency’s annual unclaimed property advertising insert. The 184-page insert, which is in today’s issue of The Republican, is designed help reunite Marylanders with nearly $51 million in unclaimed property.
The unclaimed property unit of the comptroller’s office is the guardian of bank accounts, contents of safe deposit boxes, security deposits, wages and insurance benefits, and proceeds that have been unclaimed for more than three years. Property such as parcels of land or homes is not included.
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By law, financial institutions, insurance companies, utilities, and other companies are required to notify the comptroller of any property that has gone unclaimed, or without activity, for more than three years. Once the comptroller’s office is notified, the staff try to locate the rightful owners to match them with their property.
Even though the comptroller is the guardian of the property, the items continue to belong to the owners or their rightful heirs, and are available to be claimed at any time. There is no deadline on when the owners can collect their funds.
“The number-one priority of the comptroller’s office is to serve the citizens of Maryland,” said Franchot. “In that respect, we take our responsibility for reuniting Marylanders with what is rightfully theirs very seriously. Many of the unclaimed property accounts on our books are simply forgotten by the owners. But, in other cases, the property is something left behind by a relative, which no one knew about until he/she checked the list.”
Franchot urges all who find their names in the insert to telephone his office toll-free at 1-800-782-7383 to find out how to reclaim their lost property. The agency’s complete list of 970,000 accounts, worth more than $985 million, is also available online at any time, for free, at www.marylandtaxes.com or www.missingmoney.com.
Some items held by the Unclaimed Property division of the comptroller’s office are eligible for auction on eBay to obtain the best return in value for the rightful owners. The auction program has been in place for six years, and nearly 6,100 items have been sold, totaling more than $1.2 million These items can be viewed and bid on by clicking the eBay icon at www.marylandtaxes.com.
More here.
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Garrett County could sell properties deliquent on utilities
Would be part of annual tax sale in May
Megan Miller
Cumberland Times-News
OAKLAND — Garrett County property owners who are 60 or more days delinquent on payment of their water and sewer bills could see their properties put up for public tax sale as early as May.
That’s according to County Administrator Monty Pagenhardt, who said the county has to find a way to recoup the thousands of dollars it is owed for those public utilities.
“The next tax sale is May, so since we already have that authority, those delinquent properties will go forward,” he said.
Since the annual tax sale is held in May, owners who run delinquent in the summer could go nearly a year before their properties could be put up for sale, while owners who run delinquent in the beginning of the calendar year might have only a few months before the county takes action.
Jeff Broadwater, an accountant with the Department of Public Utilities, said as of Wednesday the county was owed $328,322 in unpaid water and sewer bills, from 633 different accounts. That’s an increase of about $46,000 since November, and $25,000 of that increase is attributable to 17 accounts that owe the most.
In November, the county commission submitted a legislative request to Sen. George Edwards and Delegate Wendell Beitzel asking for the authority to sell properties to collect payment, a method also used in cases of unpaid real estate taxes.
But it retracted the request Monday, after Beitzel pointed out, and an attorney confirmed, that the commission already has the necessary authority under existing code, Pagenhardt said.
The commission also retracted a legislative request Jan. 21 which would have enabled it to increase the county hotel rental tax from 5 percent to a maximum of 8 percent. Pagenhardt attributed that retraction to concerns from businesses that the measure would hurt the county’s tourism industry, driving down income from vacation rentals.
Edwards and Beitzel said they will pursue several other pieces of legislation during the 2010 session targeting Garrett County issues. Those include enabling legislation to allow the commission to implement setback ordinances and decommissioning provisions for wind energy turbines, measures to change the way title searches for dormant mineral rights are conducted and solutions to the shortage of OB/GYN services in the county.
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