By Isabel Sanchez
Journal Staff Writer
The check is in the mail, Bill Valdez was told. As of Friday, he hadn't seen the $200 Bernalillo County owes him for overpayment of 1999 property taxes.
Valdez's protest to the Assessor's Office is one of thousands that have gone to the Treasurer's Office after being resolved. Some result in refunds. Valdez, for example, said he was told in June or July that his assessment was in error and he would be repaid.
He has yet to see the money. "I don't really expect it anymore," he said.
Treasurer Alex Abeyta and his staff planned to work over the weekend on 3,500 or so "AA's" — assessor's authorizations — still to be processed. There is no way to tell, he said Thursday, how many are refunds.
Abeyta, county Assessor Mark Carrillo and Daniel Aragon, Abeyta's predecessor, say the problem is a $4.5 million software program that the county bought in late 1997 from Cole-Layer-Trumble Co. of Dayton, Ohio.
"They sold us a faulty product, as far as I'm concerned," Carrillo said.
Abeyta has been on the job since Jan. 2, and he said program fixes have to be made almost every day.
"It's frustrating," he said. He said he asked County Manager Juan Vigil for a meeting "where we can really do some soul-searching and find a solution to this dilemma. My people are very discouraged."
The software also has difficulty with the property tax disbursement program, he said, which had plagued Aragon's tenure last year.
Aragon said he asked about the county getting its money back and was "told by the county manager that that is not a solution."
Bernalillo County collects property taxes for 13 entities as well as itself, which comes to about $281 million for the year 2000. Like Aragon did last year, Abeyta is having to estimate how much goes to the other entities, such as the city or Albuquerque Public Schools.
"Overall, the computer system is working," Cole-Layer-Trumble president Bruce Nagel said in a telephone interview Thursday. Processing the assessor's authorizations involves a combination of things that could go wrong — in the software or the way data are entered by the assessor's or treasurer's staff. "This has been one of the last things to get ironed out," he said.
Nagel said the county could give the system back, but it wouldn't have a way to process its property taxes. The assessor's side of it works well and the number of treasurer's issues has declined from dozens to a few, he said. "It's not like there's no progress being made."
The assessor's authorizations and the tax disbursements, he said, based on "what I know right now," will be resolved in 30 to 60 days.
"How much longer are we going to wait, bottom line?" is a question Abeyta wants to ask county officials. "I think we can't wait 30, 60, 90 days. I full well plan to solve the problem."
"Bottom line," Nagel said, "I'm responsible for making all this software work, and we'll keep working on it until it is."
Valdez, meanwhile, has taken off work to go to the Assessor's Office and the Treasurer's Office, and wonders why he has to spend money to get his money.
"It has gotten so frustrating. I don't like the idea that if you don't pay, you will be hit with penalties and interest, yet those rules don't apply to them."

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