From left are Southwestern Central School District board member Troy Durnell, Pam SaGurney, district secretary and clerk, and Superintendent Molly Moore. P-J photo by Owen Reed

Southwestern Central School Board is in the midst of correcting a mistake with their tax bills.

Incorrect bills were sent out despite being marked for spoilage. While not being at the fault of Southwestern, the school took on public responsibility and has spent time in recent weeks reaching out to concerned residents individually.

Southwestern’s tax bills are required to be postmarked before September, with the school having had all of the bills prepared, organized, and marked to be sent out on Aug. 29, stated District Superintendent Molly Moore at a recent school board meeting. The day before the bills’ postage was scheduled, Moore was notified of an error in the tax bill calculations and told by the county not to send the incorrect bills.

The county quickly began reprinting the bills once the mistake was realized, with Moore saying the district had received the new bills by Sept. 2. Annette Rhebergen, school business executive, said the correct bills were mailed on Sept. 4.

The county was able to reimburse the school for the nearly $700 that was spent on the envelopes for the first round of incorrect bills, but the school still needed to go through the process of receiving reimbursement for the more than $2,500 in postage, according to Moore. The post office informed Moore that the incorrect bills needed to be brought to the post office in order to be sent to their industrial shredder in Buffalo, at which time they filed a report and gave a clear note that the mail was to be processed for spoilage, according to Moore.

Once the incorrect mail was sent to Buffalo it was later returned to Jamestown where, at some point in the process, a miscommunication occurred which led to the post office sending out all of the incorrect mail that was supposed to be destroyed, according to Rhebergen. As a result, many residents began receiving a second tax bill in the mail, that being the incorrect one, on or after Sept. 15, after the receival of the correct bills. This led to a swath of confusion across the district, and calls from confused residents began to pour into the school.

“This is a circumstance where I can confidently say this was no fault of our own, but we owed it to the taxpayers to be very patient and to explain to them and to take that time because, understandably so, it was a very confusing process for the taxpayers as well,” Moore said during the board meeting.

Members of the district offices dropped all other non-essential activities and led an office-wide cooperative effort to begin contacting confused residents that had left the school voicemails according to Moore, with her noting that Rhebergen had 314 voicemails on the following business morning with many more calls coming in throughout the day. Rhebergen stated that the school has fielded nearly 1,000 calls, though the district sent roughly 8,000 total tax bills. The school has put a notice in the newspaper, on the school Facebook page, and on uits webpage according to Rhebergen, and the school is continuing to field phone calls to those that have reached out with concerns.

For any issues related to the received tax bills visit www.swcsk12.org, or call 716-484-1136.