ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Friday, November 1, 1996               TAG: 9611010022
SECTION: CURRENT                  PAGE: NRV10 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG 
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER

4,000 TAX TICKETS RETURNED TO SENDER

More than 4,000 tax tickets mailed by the Montgomery County treasurer's office have been returned, either because no forwarding address is on file or the forwarding has expired.

That's creating a lot of rework for Treasurer Ellis Meredith and his staff. It also has cost the office about $1,300 in extra postage.

About 40 percent of the returned statements had Postal Service stickers on them giving the new address but noting the forwarding period of one year had expired. The rest of the statements were returned because there was no forwarding address.

Montgomery County has mailed out the tickets for the real estate and personal property taxes due by Dec. 5.

The returned mail "creates a problem with a lot of tax statements that can't be delivered," said Supervisor Joe Gorman, who brought up the problem at Monday's Board of Supervisors' meeting. "These statements represent a rather large dollar value as far as our budget is concerned."

Meredith said Wednesday that most of the 4,200 returned statements - probably 98 percent of them - were personal property bills and many involve Virginia Tech students. Meredith said almost 37,000 personal property bills were mailed out. Personal property includes cars, trucks, boats and camping trailers.

If a forwarding address is provided, Meredith's office will readdress the bill and send it out again. When no forwarding address is provided, his staff has to try to find a new address by searching a database using Social Security numbers.

Staff members are doing this work when they have a few minutes between their regular tasks, Meredith said.

Jeff Lunsford, assistant county administrator, said he has suggested Meredith garner the support of other treasurers and commissioners of revenue to ask the Postal Service to reconsider the regulation.

Lunsford said it just makes good customer-service sense to send on correspondence if the new address is known.

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