Treasurer looking at mobile homes

Sandoval County Treasurer Laura Montoya wants to collect taxes that may have been neglected.

She said there could be more than $3.7 million in delinquent property taxes. And if those accounts are delinquent for more than two years, then it’s the state’s turn to take a crack at it.

“Then we only get a portion of that money,” she said.

Montoya said she wants to try to collect about half the unpaid amount before turning the responsibility over to the state. But she has another idea as well, she said, and it has to do with manufactured homes.

There are 1,905 delinquent mobile home accounts — or about 48 percent of all manufactured home accounts. That’s about $600,000 worth of debt to the county, Montoya said, and it’s actually down from about $800,000 at the start of the year.

“I think that a lot of times people think they don’t have to pay,” she said. “Some don’t know better.”

Some people will lease land and move from one county to another without registering their home with the county, she said.

There are 721 homes with unknown addresses or the county only has a post office box for the property, and there are 535 manufactured homes with invalid serial numbers.

“We need to clean up our tax rolls,” she said. “(The home) might have burned down; they might have moved. We haven’t been able to get out in the field to see one way or another.”

And that is why Montoya wants to hire a new employee. Right now, all but one person on her staff is female, she said by way of explanation, and none feels comfortable going out and knocking on doors in the county’s mobile home parks. That’s especially true after a story about someone coming out of one of the manufactured homes with a rifle made its way around the county building.

“They have made it very, very clear to me that this is not something they want to do,” she said.

Montoya said a new employee, who would earn between $15 and $19 per hour, would easily pay for himself or herself.