Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

State Property Tax Collections Are Up

Charlie Daniels, Commissioner of State Lands, has released the statistics for the State Land Office for the calendar year, 1996, which reflect a 15 percent increase in collections over 1995. Daniels collected $6,996,525 in 1996 as compared to $6,033,642 in 1995.

"I belive that this increase is a reflection of our ever increasing efforts to contact land owners prior to the sale of their property. The sales of delinquent parcels only accounted for 14% or about $950,000 of the total funds we collected last year," stated Daniels. "This brings the total we have collected since I took office in 1985 to almost $48 million."

Over $750,000 was collected through the Natural Resources Minerals Leasing Division of the office, which is responsible for leasing the mineral interests on all lands owned by the State of Arkansas. The collections in that division were 30 percent higher than in 1995.

"We should see another drastic increase in collections this year as a result of Act 660 of 1995, which shortened the length of time delinquent parcels are held at the ocunty level before being forefeited to the state and coming to my office for collection," Daniels explained. "We will receive the delinquent parcels for tax years 1993 and 1994 during the next several months.

"It is our hope that as a result of this change we will receive more up to date addresses of the owners and thus be better able to notify them of the delinquency," Daniels said. "Owners will still have two years after notification by my office to redeem their property prior to its sale."