A huge error at the Linn County Clerk’s office nearly cost the Prairie View School District millions of dollars. Superintendent Chris Johnson was doing a quick check of the abstract for the tax statement in the Paola newspaper last week and she discovered the mill levy listed was not only incorrect, it was way off the tax levy approved by the Prairie View Board of Education in September, by more than 10 mills. If not corrected, the school district would lose about $3.1 million in both the capital outlay and local option budgets.
It was discovered that a Linn County staff member had entered the wrong number. She says that the Linn County Clerk’s office sent her a corrected certified abstract. But, that’s a big problem when it comes to tax statements. Johnson says Miami County has already sent out tax statements, so they will have to hand-calculate and hand-send out about 2,000 statements and that’s going to take a lot of time. The Miami County office will send out a corrected version on January 9th that spells out how much taxes have been paid and how much more each property owner will owe.
