Lackawanna County’s annual judicial sale will not take place until Wednesday, but it is already producing results.
The owners of 54 of the 309 tax-delinquent properties originally listed for the sale had settled up by Thursday afternoon, paying a total of $281,528 in back taxes to get their properties off the auction block, Tax Claim Bureau Deputy Director Ron Koldjeski said.
Both numbers are expected grow by Tuesday’s noon deadline for owners to avoid the sale by paying off their delinquencies.
“We should be around $400,000 or more before this sale,” Mr. Koldjeski said.
The intent of the judicial sale, the fourth conducted by Mr. Koldjeski’s office since 2008, is to nudge property owners to resolve their delinquencies or — in cases in which they don’t — get the properties into the hands of new owners who will pay their taxes on a regular basis.
While collecting the past-due tax revenue is important, so is altering the attitude that failure to pay taxes carries no consequences, Mr. Koldjeski said.
“The biggest accomplishment is to change that mind-set, to get people to say, ‘We have to pay those taxes,’” he said. “We are changing the way people think. If you don’t pay your taxes, we are coming after you.”
By the time the bidding starts Wednesday at 10 a.m. at the courthouse, Mr. Koldjeski anticipates the number of properties offered will have shrunk to around 150.
In addition to the 54 properties whose owners have already paid, Judge Margaret Bisignani Moyle ordered another 67 properties removed from Wednesday’s sale after a court hearing last Friday.
Mr. Koldjeski said the owners of most of those properties now have until March 21 to pay or make arrangements to pay their delinquent taxes to avoid losing the properties when the judicial sale continues March 23.
Nine other properties initially slated for sale were removed from the list because the Tax Claim Bureau was unable to properly serve notice on the owners, he said.
Of the $6.5 million in delinquent taxes owed on the original 309 properties, nearly a third of the total — more than $2.1 million — involved just four Dickson City properties owned by Bell Mountain Village or Bell Realty Inc., Mr Koldjeski said.
Three are land-only parcels; the fourth is the improved parcel where the original Dickson City Walmart was located before boulders tumbling off the hillside behind the store prompted the retailer to abandon the site in 1996.
Under an agreement hashed out at Friday’s hearing, $300,000 in back taxes on the three land-only properties must be paid by March 21 or the parcels will be offered at the March 23 sale, Mr. Koldjeski said.
As for the fourth parcel, which is now the subject of assessment-related litigation, Bell Mountain Village has until September to pay a minimum of $430,000 in delinquent taxes or it will be sold, he said.
More than 90 prospective bidders have already registered for Wednesday’s sale.
The properties being offered fall into three groups: those that did not attract a buyer during the fall upset sale, those with delinquencies of $25,000 or more and multiple delinquent properties with a single owner. Some have delinquencies dating back to 1993.
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dsingleton@timesshamrock.com