Drainage service charges will wait until after 2009 budget is ready

CHARLESTON -- Splitting up drainage service charges in Mississippi County will have to wait until after the budget is prepared.

W.R. "Bill" Thompson, Mississippi County's assessor, said he has been approached by people with questions about drainage taxes for a couple of different reasons.

Some of those questions are from churches who are wondering why they are being asked to pay a tax.

Thompson said the reason is a drainage tax is not really a tax at all, but a charge for drainage services which they are not exempt from.

"We don't refer to it as a taxation even though it looks like a tax -- when the tax bills are sent out, money is collected for this service," Thompson said. "This is the reason non-profit organizations are charged for this service. Non-profit organizations are not taxed -- they are tax exempt. Taxing agencies are not taxed -- they are exempt. In other words, the state of Missouri can't tax the county, and the county can't tax the state."

Churches aren't the only ones confused by the issue, according to Thompson.

"The prison said 'We don't owe the service charge,'" Thompson said. "My contention is the Southeast Correctional Center should be paying their part as well -- they are on Ditch 14 and it does drain their property."

The state also refuses to pay drainage service for Big Oak Tree State Park land in the county, he noted.

Thompson said he has also been approached by landowners who have split parcels and are still paying for drainage benefits on land they no longer own.

He offered as an example the landowner who sold the land the prison occupies.

"He had a 160-acre-farm and sold off 80 (acres)," Thompson recalled. That landowner is still paying drainage service on all 160 acres while the prison is not being billed for their 80 acres, according to Thompson.

"I'm bringing it to the Commission's attention in an unofficial way for something to be done in the future. It's something that needs to be corrected," Thompson said. "It's not being updated at the present time. By not being updated, it's way out of whack; it's not current."

Thompson said while it is his office that those with questions about drainage service come to, it is not the assessor's job to determine how much each parcel should pay in drainage service when land is split up.

"The assessor's job is to divide value," he said. "When there's a split done we forward the information to the collector."

In Scott County, the collector splits the drainage service bill based on the drainage benefits each parcel receives after a split.

E. Dewayne Nowlin, collector of revenue for New Madrid County, said that is how it is done in his county as well.

He also agreed that the drainage tax is not actually a tax at all.

"It's called an assessed benefit," Nowlin said. "It's not considered a tax."

While having the collector address drainage service works well in Scott County and New Madrid County, Thompson said Missouri Revised Statutes do not require collectors to do this.

"There is a statute that says who is in charge of this and it's not the collector," he said. "The collector (in Mississippi County) does exactly what she's supposed to do -- she collects. She doesn't correct the data."

Jim Blumenberg, presiding commissioner for Mississippi County, said the commission is focusing on the preparation of the county's 2009 budget for the time being so the issue with drainage service bills on split properties will have to wait.

"After we get through with all of our budget stuff we'll check it out," Blumenberg said. "We'll see what's going on with it."

Thompson said he hopes the new commission will address it. "It's a wrong and needs to be righted," he said.