Some residents of Placitas are crying foul over a special district tax assessment they keep paying, though the debt they’re being taxed for has been paid off.
George Franzen, president of the Eastern Sandoval Citizens Association (ESCA), said property owners in Placitas have been overcharged for debt service to the local flood control agency. He said the group guesses that Placitas taxpayers have paid up $600,000 to $900,000 they did not owe.
Franzen told the Sandoval Signpost ESCA has retained an attorney to resolve the matter, after residents’ efforts to halt the tax collections last year were unsuccessful.
The issue began, according to a history on ESCA’s website, when Placitas residents discovered their community had been improperly placed within the Eastern Sandoval Arroyo Flood Control Authority (ESCAFCA).
In 2011, the organization won the passage in Santa Fe of HB306, legislation that removed Placitas from ESCAFCA’s taxing authority. Franzen said the bill stipulated that Placitas would pay its share of the agency’s accrued debt until it was retired.
He said that payoff was reached in 2022, but ESCAFCA charges remained on Placitas residents’ tax bills in 2023, 2024, and 2025. The payments appear to have been diverted from debt service to operational expenses.
Sandoval County Commissioner Katherine Bruch, whose district includes Placitas, said the situation “is a bit of a unicorn.”
She said the bill didn’t really clarify what would happen when the debt was retired and there appears to be no mechanism in place to address the overpayments.
Bernalillo Mayor Jack Torres sits on the ESCAFCA Board of Directors. He told the Signpost he’s frustrated with the situation, and the agency’s inability to do anything about it.
He said the board sent a letter to Sandoval County authorities and to the New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration (DFA), but determined that ESCAFCA itself doesn’t have the authority to fix the problem.
“We understand what should have happened, but for some reason it didn’t,” Torres said. “We’re the end user of the tax, but we don’t control the assessment or the collection of it.”
Torres said the ESCAFCA board has been hoping for a solution for several months, to no avail.
County Manager Wayne Johnson said the plight of the Placitas residents illustrates a flaw in the state’s property tax collections process.
The DFA, he said, typically sends out tax certificates to counties the Friday before Labor Day, giving local authorities just five days to approve them. Johnson said the county then asks the taxing entities within its boundaries — which include cities and towns, school districts and special districts — to verify that their tax rates are correct.
“If nobody responds, we assume it’s accurate and approve it,” he said.
Invariably, Johnson said, one or more of those entities will need to revise its rate due to inaccuracy.
He said the county has come up with a solution going forward.
“We won’t be approving any tax certificates we deem to have incorrect rates,” he said.
The state appears unwilling to intervene in the current dispute. A letter from George Hypolite, general counsel in the office of DFA Secretary Wayne Propst, to Placitas property owner Mike Neas, indicates the state agency has no authority to order changes.
“The department performs a ministerial function in the rate-setting process,” Propst wrote. “We do not determine the appropriate rate or the property within a county to which it applies. Taxing entities and counties make these determinations, and under § 7-38-6, NMSA 1978, DFA is required to presume their correctness.”
The letter also states that property owners have the right to appeal tax rates they feel have been improperly applied.
“I sincerely apologize for any confusion or difficulty you have experienced in this process, but at this point, issuing an unlawful corrective order by the department would only make the situation worse,” Propst wrote.
Johnson said the problem is probably rooted in the bill itself.
“I don’t think the legislature considered how we’re going to unwind this,” he said.