GOVERNMENT: DUTCHTWON VOTERS FACE PROPERTY TAX ISSUE ON TUESDAY

DUTCHTOWN, Mo. -- The village of Dutchtown is asking its voters to approve a tax on personal property and real estate that they already have been paying for a year.

If they don't vote yes Tuesday on the catch-up ballot issue, the Missouri attorney general could file a lawsuit against the village.

Election judges in the Campster-Pecan Grove and Gordonville precincts will hand out an additional ballot to voters identified as residents of Dutchtown, a village of 104 people 10 miles southwest of Cape Girardeau. The ballot will ask the under 50 registered voters to approve or reject a tax of 32 cents on every $100 of assessed valuation on real estate and personal property.

The revenue is planned to partially fund the town's share of construction costs in building an earthen levee to keep out floodwater of the Diversion Channel south of town. Dutchtown is slated to pay 5 percent of this U.S. Army Corps of Engineers levee, or $40,000.

Dutchtown residents already approved a 1-cent sales tax in August to fund the town's portion of levee costs.

A total of $1,300 from 1999 has been collected under the new personal property and real estate tax but not turned over to Dutchtown, said Cape Girardeau County Collector Diane Diebold. The year 2000 bills won't be mailed if the issue isn't approved next week, she said.

"It's kind of left me holding the bag, because we're not going to send the bills out until I know their tax levy has passed," said Diebold. "If it doesn't, then I'm going to have to take it up with the attorney general's office to see what we have to do. We may have to take it out of their bills and re-figure."

H.W. "Bud" Obermann, a member of the Dutchtown board of trustees, said the ad valorem tax was submitted to the county clerk last year by a petition of Dutchtown residents. The petition contained over 60 signatures, he said. The county clerk's office, in turn, passed the tax to the county collector's office for inclusion in the 1999 bills.

Both County Clerk Rodney Miller and Diebold said they have no mechanism to contest tax rates handed over to them by cities and villages, but the state auditor's office does. However, Diebold can refuse to collect a tax for a city or village.

The Missouri attorney general has his eye on the Dutchtown personal property and real estate tax because of the way it was levied last year, said Scott Holste of the attorney general's office. Dutchtown was one of 16 tax-issue anomalies referred to the attorney general by state Auditor Claire McCaskill since mid-September, he said.

The attorney general currently has lawsuits pending against two of these referrals, two fire protection districts in Miller County southwest of Jefferson City. The lawsuits seek to impose an injunction barring the tax authorities from collecting the questionable taxes.

"We have not filed a lawsuits yet against the city of Dutchtown. We are currently in ongoing negotiations, and we will see how those go," said Holste. "Certainly, we will be watching that election with interest."

Diebold said of the $1,300: "It's a very small amount, but we're caught in the middle here. So we're going to wait the election out."

Dutchtown incorporated as a village in 1998 for the purpose of acquiring the levee.