Bamboozled: Here's what you can learn from a New Jersey senior's tax fight vs. city hall

Homeowners have a responsibility to make timely property tax payments. 

Joan Bloomer wants to know when that responsibility ends.

For 43 years, Bloomer has lived in her Clinton home, a commercial property in a prime location in town. The building has two stores on the ground floor, and on the upper levels, one office and three apartments.

Bloomer, 67, says she's always paid her property taxes on time, with the exception of once in the mid-1990s. She said during a snowstorm, while driving a friend to the hospital, she dropped her payment in a mailbox outside the Clinton post office. The payment never made it to the tax collector, so Bloomer didn't argue, and she paid about $35 in interest penalties and re-wrote the check for her tax payment. 

Now, she says, she's extra careful to make sure her payments are received. 

Despite that care, Bloomer received her second-ever late property tax notice earlier this year in a mishap that's gotten her ire up. 

It started on Feb. 7, when Bloomer transferred money from one account to another to cover her property taxes, records show. 

"From the bank, I went to the post office with my envelope, which included the check and tax stub to be mailed," she said in a letter to the Clinton mayor and town council. "John, a sales associate who has worked at the post office for 14 years, hand stamped the envelope and put it directly into the Town of Clinton box."

All was well until Feb. 26, when she received a notice of delinquency, which included a penalty interest charge for a late payment. 

"I mailed the check, and it was placed directly into the town box," Bloomer said. "I checked with the post office and John clearly remembers putting my envelope into the town box."

Bloomer said it shouldn't be her responsibility to pay penalty interest because of what she calls a mistake on the town's part. 

So that day, Bloomer hand-delivered a new check for the now overdue taxes, and the town's tax collector gave her a receipt. Bloomer also hand-delivered a written request for a waiver of the punitive interest. 

The answer came in a March 27 letter from Clinton mayor Janice Kovach. 

Kovach said the town's attorney determined there is no provision in the statutes that would allow the town, or any municipality, to waive such interest charges.

"Please understand it is not that we don't want to waive the interest, because if we could, we would do so immediately," Kovach's letter said. "Rather, it is that we are legally precluded from doing so, and the last thing the Town wants to do is knowingly violate any State law."

Bloomer wasn't satisfied. 

Joan Bloomer outside her Clinton home. She says the town lost her tax payment, but is holding her responsible for punitive interest. Aristide Economopoulos/NJ Advance Media 

"My envelope was put into the town post office box by a federal postal employee," she said. "I would think my responsibility ends right there, but according to the tax collector, `until it reaches my desk it is not paid.' Therefore, it can be lost from the post office box to her desk and that makes me still responsible."

Bloomer said she asked a town employee how the town's mail gets from the post office building to the town offices. She said she was told a town employee picks up the mail twice a day from the post office, and then it's sorted again when it gets to the town building.

"Who knows how many people handle the mail and they still want me to be responsible," Bloomer said. "Had I mailed it in the collection box outside of the post office, I would not complain, but that isn't the case. Someone at town hall picked up the mail and it was lost from the box and never even got to the tax collector's desk."

Unhappy, Bloomer paid the interest charge of $55.41 on March 31, and she reached out to Bamboozled.

"I am a bookkeeper, and any system unable to refund monies based on an error is seriously flawed," she said Click here to continue reading.