By Brian Wright
Casa Grande Dispatch
When your neighbor pays $240 in taxes to a sanitation dis- trict and you pay about $1,800, it can foster some frustration.
That’s the situation Casa Grande-area resident Douglas Reich found himself in with the Desert Vista Sanitary District this year, and he wants some- thing done about it.
Last week, Reich told the Casa Grande Dispatch several residents in the district, just north of Casa Grande, have been grossly overcharged for years. However, it really got out of control in 2012, when he said the tax rate jumped.
The problem, Reich said, is each property owner is paying the tax rate based on the value of their home, which Reich said is “illegal” taxation. He also said people who aren’t even connected to the sewer are being taxed by the sanitation district.
“How you get charged for your sewer is essentially based on the property value of your home, which is illegal because sewer is a utility, and you can’t claim the utility as a tax deduction,” he said.
Reich was in talks with Pinal County staffers for the last month, and he set a deadline of Nov. 16 for the county to rectify the issue on two fronts — or he and nine others would take legal action against the county.
In a formal letter sent to Reich on Nov. 16 by Manny Gonzalez, the assistant county manager for administrative services, the county agreed to remedy the uneven charges, but another question remained unanswered — would the county agree to reimburse Reich and others for 2012 and the prior three years of overpayments?
“Any deficiency in those (taxing) processes will be addressed and corrected for future assessment and billing purposes,” Gonzalez wrote.
