2010/01/14/email to Tax Assessor

Dear Tax Assessor,

We mailed a letter on December 10, 2009 regarding the property tax due for this year, but we did not hear back from anyone. (It was mailed to: County of Durham, Office of the Tax Administrator, PO Box 3397, Durham, NC 27702-3397.)

There have been new developments since then, and we are trying this email address instead since we did not receive any reply to the letter.

We had just about managed to put together enough cash to pay the tax anyway (despite feeling that it is unreasonable), when our sewer lines began backing up. We have known for some time that the lines were likely to need replacement soon, but we had hoped to avoid it for a few more years while we dealt with some other issues (including residential placement for Sandy's profoundly autistic son).

At this point, though, we are going to have to have the lines replaced immediately. We don't yet have a firm estimate, but the rough estimate was $3800, which will eat up most of what we had set aside (and we will be lucky if that is all it costs).

We should be able to do another mortgage and credit consolidation to get the money for the taxes, but that will take weeks or months to set up (depending on how many other crises come up in the mean time), so we will at least need an extension on the bill.

As we said in the letter, though, we feel that the current valuation is unrealistically high.

Please confirm that you have received this message.

Thank you,