Tuesday, March 20, 2001 The Columbian About 8,600 property owners received surprise tax bills from the Clark County Treasurer's Office in the last week or so.

Even though they pay their property taxes through their mortgage lenders, they received statements because Lereta Corp., a realty tax service company, didn't provide their names to the county by a Dec. 31 deadline, Treasurer Doug Lasher said Monday.

Lereta coordinates real-estate tax payments to Clark County for such mortgage lenders as Washington Mutual.

"We're sorry it happened," said Fred Holstein, Northwest region operations manager for Lereta in Federal Way.

A data processing problem kept the company from getting an electronic file to the county in time to prevent the tax bills from being sent out, he said.

The homeowners who mistakenly received tax bills account for about 6 percent of the 137,850 real-estate owners billed by the county.

Lasher said his staff takes a lot of calls around tax time, but even more because of this glitch. The county alerted Lereta to the problem last week.

The affected property owners should receive a letter from Lereta by today explaining the problem and instructing them not to pay the county twice, Holstein said.

http://www.columbian.com/03202001/clark_co/184943.html

-- Doris (nocents@bellsouth.net), March 20, 2001