RI TAX COLLECTOR’S MEETING
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2010
A
meeting of RITCA was held at Amalfi’s @ The village Inn Resort of 1 Beach
Street, Narragansett, R.I. Breakfast
served and then David Dolce, Past
President, opened the meeting at 9:30 am. He thanked everyone in attendance and
Lesley for coordinating the meeting.
Great job as always.
Secretary report- Jane Steere passed out
minutes of May 25, 2010 (last regular meeting). A motion was made to accept the
report as printed, seconded and so voted.
Treasurer report- Melinda Boeglin reported a
bank balance of 9/21/10 is $5,554.29.
Her report was accepted as stated.
There
were no communications to discuss.
Education committee- Joanne Santos reported that
she has spoken with Roger Williams College and sent email to the math and
accounting departments to see if anyone would come and speak to the RITCA
group. Working on Point & Pay to
speak and many Towns are already doing
credit card and ACH payments.
Some future topics mentioned for meetings were communication skills,
motivational speakers, interest rates and office security.
Program- David Dolce has added an RFP
for distressed sale of tangible/personal property-UCC lien, Tax Sale check list
and RFP to the website.
Issues
and ideas our group should be addressing as an organization. Metts and Almedia were the driving force
behind the Madeline Walker bill. Almedia
was just defeated in his primary and that leaves Metts. Rick Cohn and his group have hired a lobbiest
to deal with this and other legislation that may be introduced.
Our
legislative committee needs to reorganize.
Dave stated that Cheryl DiGiuseppe, Pawtucket Tax Collector has offered
to be on this committee. Dave felt two
to four people are needed, one each from large, medium and small town. Rita Dean of Hopkington name was mentioned
and Melinda will contact her.
Melinda
introduced the idea that Tax Collectors should have to be certified just as
Town Clerks, Assessors, etc. She thinks
an administrative course is needed, one year as a Tax Collector and a couple of
courses per year which our group could offer as part of the education. Joanne will
look into this. Pat Paola from
Webster Bank said that Amherst has a course for this.
Lesley
brought up the membership list. She
would like some help keeping the list up and emailing everyone as she has an
older computer and sometimes has problems sending out information and feels
overwhelmed. Pam Fontaine from Foster
volunteered to help Lesley. Dave also
took this opportunity to thank Pam for filling the Executive Board position
vacated by Lynette Lussier.
Credit
Card services were mentioned by Pat Paola from Webster Bank. They now offer this service and have
partnered with First Data and are able to work with any software. Jennifer Tammello from Rossi Law stated that
they use a credit card service and it seems very safe. They pay a flat fee of five dollars and they
have had no one cancel their payment. A
credit card discussion followed with the various vendors and collectors
present.
Jennifer
also mentioned Fair credit reporting accounting- you cannot check into a
person’s credit prior to filing a lawsuit.
Just as on taxes and state fines credit cannot be checked prior to suit.
Dave
is trying to get collectors interested in “Online Access to Tax Information
Status”, where a person or vendor can go and get the payment history and
balance owed on a particular account.
Peter told him if he gets enough interested in signing up for this he
will do it.
Dave
also thought we should go back to the five to ten minute presentation from a
tax collector, what they may do for a particular part of the job, at our RITCA
meetings. This would be done before the main
topic was introduced.
Dave
also mentioned that a joint meeting with the RIAAO(Assessors) may be a
possibility for January with Ernie Smith-DMV and RL Polk rating agency who is
selling software to the DMV for vin checks.
Motion
made to adjourn at 10:20 a.m., seconded and so voted.
Respectfully
submitted,
Jane
A. Steere, Secretary