More than 35,000 Monroe County taxpayers are set to receive an unwelcome surprise in their mailboxes this week, as a programming error resulted in duplicate tax bills from Charlotte County, Florida being sent to Keys property addresses.
Residents began reporting the erroneous tax bills from Charlotte County Tax Collector Vickie L. Potts on Nov. 6 – sent to Monroe County mailing addresses, but detailing tax assessments from real properties from the mainland county.
The inaccurate billing originated with a programming error at printing services provider TC Delivers, a third-party firm used by both counties to mail tax bills, Monroe County Tax Collector Sam Steele told the Weekly.
According to an email sent by TC Delivers national account manager Laura Ferreira to Steele’s office, the company correctly mailed a complete set of tax bills for both Charlotte and Monroe County before the programming error caused “an additional 35,469 tax bills mailed with Monroe County addresses, printed on Charlotte tax bill paper with their envelopes.”
“It’s a huge error, they should have caught it when they were QC’ing the counts from the last time we mailed Charlotte’s tax bills, but they didn’t,” Ferreira wrote. “I can never explain how truly sorry we are for causing this issue.”
Steele said he expected a formal statement from TC Delivers to be printed on Steele’s letterhead and mailed to Monroe County taxpayers – on TC Delivers’ dime – taking responsibility for the error. In the meantime, he added, Keys residents receiving the additional bill from Charlotte County should securely destroy the paper, as they are not responsible for the bill.
Correct Monroe County tax bills were sent Oct. 31, Steele said, and most residents should have received their correct bills within the past week. Those bills still need to be paid.
“Some taxpayers were concerned that there was a data breach – there was no data breach,” Steele told the Weekly. “It was a sloppy mistake that was small, but very significant. I have addressed this oversight with the print vendor to ensure it does not happen again.
“As your tax collector, I want to reassure all Monroe County taxpayers that no data breach has occurred, and that payments made through our website are encrypted, safe, and secure. My office is fully committed to safeguarding public funds and confidential information by adhering to rigorous security protocols designed to protect your data.”
