County collects $1.4 million in past-due taxes

By Kevin O’Brien

Since sending out over 1,200 brightly colored notices to property owners with past-due taxes in November, Marathon County has collected more than $1.4 million in payments from those who owe the county money.

County administrator Lance Leonhard reported this number last week to members of the Human Resources, Finance and Capital (HRFC) Committee, who have been working for the last two years to chip away at the county’s backlog of delinquent tax bills and special assessments.

Of the total amount collected since November, a little more than half of it ($780,000) was taxes owed in 2024, but some

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of the settled debt stretches all the way back to 2013. From that year alone, 14 tax certificates were paid off, totaling $20,800 in real estate taxes and $5,500 in special assessments.

As of Jan. 10, the county’s listing of taxdelinquent properties includes 2,858 tax certificates (a notice of unpaid taxes), with a total of $3.7 million in taxes and assessments outstanding. This is down from 3,786 tax certificates worth $5.2 million in October of 2024 – a decrease of 28 percent – before the notices went out.

Printing the notices on bright yellow paper with red lettering made it harder for people to ignore, Leonhard noted. Going forward, he and committee members agreed that the county should continue sending out past-due notices once or twice a year in an effort to get property owners to pay what they owe.

“If you owe a business money, they do a very good of letting you know about it,” he noted.

Leonhard said notices for 131 parcels with past-due taxes were held back because they’re being included in the next batch of properties targeted for possible foreclosure through the “in rem” legal process, which allows the county to seize multiple properties in a single court filing.

The first batch of taxdelinquent properties taken through the in rem process this past fall includes 12 properties that were recently sold on the Wisconsin Surplus online auction site. County clerk Kim Trueblood told the committee that the website recently cut the county a check for $274,288 – the net amount generated by the property sales through competitive bids.

In addition to paying off past-due taxes, interest and penalties, those properties will now be back on the tax roll, Trueblood noted. Under a new state law, the county must pay the previous owner of the foreclosed property any amount beyond what was needed to settle the tax debt and cover the county’s costs.

Trueblood said Wisconsin Surplus has been very easy to work with, noting that the company even posted its own for-sale signs on the properties and will take them down now that they’ve been sold.

“This has been a really good experience,” she said. “I am anxiously awaiting the next batch.”

Supervisor John Robinson, chair of the HRFC, said he wants the county to continue focusing on the properties with the oldest debt, since it can no longer pursue collection after 10 years. “If we don’t collect it, we lose that opportunity going forward,” he said. County treasurer Connie Beyersdorf said her office normally sends out letters in March to those who have not paid their first installment of property taxes by the Jan. 31 deadline. A second letter is sent out in September after the July 31 deadline for second installments has passed.

Leonhard offered to sit down with Beyersdorf and work on a revised calendar for sending out communications to delinquent taxpayers every year.

“We really need to communicate twice a year for those who have perennial, longstanding back taxes,” he said. “We should clean up this list substantially in the near future. Moving forward, it should be much fewer people.”

Beyersdorf said her office processes pastdue tax payments nearly every day, collecting a little over $100,000 per week. She said attorneys, title companies and others frequently contact her office to settle outstanding debts on behalf of property owners.

Despite the progress made in recent years on clearing tax delinquencies, a few hurdles remain. Some of the past-due amounts remain essentially untouchable because they are the subject of bankruptcy or probate proceedings, Beyersdorf said, and 52 of the notices sent out in November came back as undeliverable.

For the undeliverable letters, Leonhard said the county could consider sending pastdue notices using first-class mail, which ensures that the letters will be sent to a forwarding address.

There’s also the issue of so-called “slivers,” small parcels of land that are often undeveloped and not buildable. Leonhard said there’s currently about 90 slivers on the county’s list of tax-delinquent properties, and all together, the amount of taxes owed is only about $7,000.

Many of these slivers have the county courthouse listed as the owner’s address, but Leonhard said that doesn’t mean they’re owned by the county. He believes they once started out as undeliverable addresses, so it will take some work to find who actually owns the properties before the county can pursue a tax foreclosure and resale.

Kim Trueblood

Connie Beyersdorf