Some 24,000 TRIM notices for the wrong year were mailed Friday to Lee County homeowners, by mistake.
Property Appraiser Matt Caldwell says the error was made when a batch of the notices did not get overwritten with the current year's data.
"The error was on the printer's side," Caldwell said. Direct Impressions, the commercial printer who has been handling the TRIM notices for years, made the error.
"They do most of the government printing in the area," Caldwell said.
TRIM is the acronym for Truth In Millage and reflects the official Notice of Proposed Property Taxes. The notices are usually sent out in late summer for the current year.
Caldwell said the wrong notices were a fraction of 650,000 sent out to Lee homeowners each year. He said the correct year’s notices will be mailed out by Tuesday.Jim Williams of Fort Myers said he was one of the 24,000.
"Yep. We received one of the 24,000/650,000 incorrect notices. I just looked at the correct TRIM notice online and it is a $1,000 difference compared to the one we received in the mail (we received a discount on last year's tax bill due to our house being deemed unlivable due to Ian)," he said.
Others who contacted WGCU said they found the correct information by going to the property appraiser's web site.
Those getting the wrong notices are not in any one geographic area of the county, Caldwell said.
"Your neighbor could have the right notice and you could have the wring one," he said.
A notice on the Lee County Property Appraiser web site also provides a method for pursuing the matter if you disagree with the information in your correct TRIM notice
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