ST. LOUIS — Thousands of St. Louis County residents received their personal property tax bills later than expected.
"Typically it comes in the mail, and you pay it. We mail it in, so we just write a check, mail it in," south county resident Joyce Kirst said.
Every year, like clockwork, Kirst gets her personal property tax bill in mid-November. This year, she started to worry when she didn't see it in the mail.
"We didn't expect that there was any other process just that the mail is delayed so we thought we'd give it a few extra days. We paid our property tax, but the personal property tax bill still hadn't arrived," Kirst said.
St. Louis County's Communications Officer Doug Moore said they had problems with contracting companies for the printing and mailing process.
"There was a little bit of a delay from moving from one company to another, and then once the new printing company got the information for the property tax bills, they had a little bit of trouble aligning the bills onto their printer, adding more delays," Moore said.
Many people received their bills this week. Moore says they're sending the last 27,000 bills on Wednesday, which should make it to their homes by Friday. He explains other options to submit payment sooner.
"You can pay online, through the St. Louis County government website, stlouiscountymo.gov or you can simply come into one of the county buildings and say I haven't received my bill and I'd like to pay it, and they'll look up the amount you owe and they'll take care of it that way," Moore said.
To avoid paying the 2.5% convenience fee online, Kirst printed her bill summary from the database and drove it to the South County office. She hopes this experience is a lesson learned for the county moving forward.
"I certainly understand lots of issues can come up and they may have wanted to start earlier, maybe next year they can look into doing that," Kirst said.
If you want to stick to the mail-in option, you still have time to get in before the end of the year.
Moore says as long as you get a postmark by Dec. 31 or before, there won't be any late fees, even if they receive it after that date.
To pay your bill online, visit the County's Online Tax Payment webpage.