(Spirit Lake)– The deadline for Iowans to pay their property taxes has been pushed back some more as the result of Governor Kim Reynolds extension of the Public Health Disaster Emergency. Dickinson County Treasurer Kris Rowley says the new deadline to pay property taxes without penalty is May 27th, 2020, but she urges those who are able to do so to pay them now…
“On the county end, we would really appreciate it if people are able to pay the taxes to do so sooner than later. Again that’s going to help all the entities that rely on taxes like our cities, our police stations, our schools, the county, the hospital, so that money is still needed and it’s going to eventually come, but if you are having hardships, just know that that date is farther out to give you time.”
Rowley says the payments have been coming in relatively good, but she says there’s still a good chunk that is yet to be paid…
“Before this happened a lot of the payments had already arrived. Obviously we already started collecting last August for taxes due at the end of September. So that was a lot of payments that came in way back then, and a lot of people paid in full at that time, too. Out of all of the tax money that we have charged out, we still have to collect about $2.7 million so that’s a chunk of change. And again that’s split between all the different entities that the taxes support. And you can find those on your tax statement if you take a look on the flip page it shows all the different entities on that part of your tax bill.”
Rowley says the newly extended deadline also applies to driver’s licenses and motor vehicles. She reminds those who’s driver’s license expired January 16th, 2020 or later that they do not have to renew their license until after the declared disaster is lifted. Rowley says they will remain valid to drive in the meantime. The same holds true for vehicle registrations, even though they can be renewed online, through the mail or by using the drop box outside the courthouse.
Rowley says the biggest concern right now is student driver’s looking to get permits…
“The testing for getting the permit can be done now through a remote-given test that you an take on your computer at home, but you still have to get issued the actual permit and so until we open we’re not able to help with that so we’re hoping that we can get open fairly quickly to get this moving through that whole arena.”
As we reported earlier, the Dickinson County Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved a three-phase plan to re-open the courthouse, but a date for doing that hasn’t been set yet.
