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KINGSTON — The school district impact from delays in sending out property tax bills— caused by a cyber attack on Luzerne County computers — continues to grow. Wyoming Valley West School Board President Joe Mazur said the board will hold a brief special meeting Tuesday for the sole agenda item of borrowing money through a short term loan known as a tax anticipation note, or TAN.
“In order for us to operate for the remainder of the year, we need to float a tax note,” Mazur said Wednesday. “This is going to be an extra burden for the Wyoming Valley West School District and for every other district.”
The county suffered a cyber attack Memorial Day Weekend that infected the real estate assessment database and prompted officials to shut down the county courthouse network May 28 to prevent the virus from spreading. The county has been struggling to unlock the database backup since, so it can assemble a real estate file that can be used to generate school tax bills.
The county initially said the delay would take until Aug. 1, but on Tuesday county Budget/Finance Division Head Brian Swetz sent letters to school district officials pushing the date to Aug. 19.
Joe Rodriguez, who retired as WVW finance manager but has been working for free as a consultant, said he recommended the TAN as a precaution. He proposed borrowing between $3 million to $5 million. Terms of the loan have not been finalized, but TANs typically are taken out for six months to one year.
“It’s almost precautionary, in case the bills go out later than the Aug. 19 projection,” Rodriguez said, adding that the best case scenario would be to still get the bills out in time to begin collecting tax payments early enough to avoid needing the TAN.
Rodriguez said he believes this is the first time in at least two decades that WVW took out a TAN. The problem is that the district usually sends out tax bills the last week of July and starts getting payments near the end of August. If there is too much of a delay in those first payments, the district could suffer a cash shortfall, threatening abilities to make payroll and pay bills.
“I think this will impact a lot of districts,” Rodriguez said.
Earlier this month at its regular meeting the Lake-Lehman School Board passed a rewritten resolution regarding due dates for property taxes, bumping deadlines by two weeks. At the time, Business Consultant Tom Melone said the change was prompted by the delays the county is experiencing due to the cyber attacks.