Bee County Tax Assessor-Collector Linda Bridge said this week that her office is not behind in property tax collections this year.

A recent report from City Manager Tim Ginter to the City Council concerning slower collections was a mistake, Bridge said.

But Bridge did not blame Ginter. She said the city manager has been working without a finance director and has not seen her more recent reports on the collection rates.

Bridge was confident that the misconception will be cleared up now that the city has hired Deborah Balli, a certified public accountant with extensive experience in municipal finance.

The tax assessor-collector said that former City Finance Director Robert Aguilar was the one who knew where to find the information on tax collections. But before he resigned a few months ago, he was out of the office recovering from back surgery.

Bridge said Balli has only recently been able to locate the most recent reports.

Ginter agreed that the absence of a finance director at the city has added to his perception of reduced collection rates.

He said the point he was trying to make when he reported to the City Council was that his concern is the pace at which ad valorem taxes are coming to the city.

“Cities use ad valorem taxes to pay off debt,” Ginter said. Property taxes also are put into the general funds and contingency funds. But debt service is one of the prime uses for those taxes.

Ginter, Balli and Bridge have met once since the city manager reported to the City Council and they were scheduled to meet again on Thursday.

“I wanted to get some information out there to let people know that the tax collections are where they should be,” Bridge said.

She said that $1,807,030.81 of the city’s property taxes have been collected so far this year.

That is 90 percent of the total $1,992,784.86 that is expected to be collected in all this year.

In addition, Bridge’s office also has collected $38,185.03 in delinquent taxes this year. That brings total collections this year to $1,845,215.84.

By this time in 2009, Bridge’s office had sent $1,873,726.86 in property taxes to the city and in 2008 that figure had reached $1,795,488.03.

“So, in reality, we’re in a very good position,” Bridge said. “I really think this was because Bobby (Aguilar) wasn’t there.”

Bridge said that when she spoke to Ginter and Balli, the new finance director already had discovered that the city was in better shape than Ginter had thought.

“We just want to make sure that it’s meeting the targets,” Ginter said.

Gary Kent is a reporter at the Bee-Picayune and can be reached at 358-2550, ext. 120, or at reporter@mySouTex.com.