SALISBURY, Md. - After years of having a joint property tax bill, taxpayers within the city limits will now have to cut two checks this year.
The city of Salisbury mailed out its individualized statements to property owners last week, but that is only half of the bill taxpayers owe.
"I thought wait a minute that don't sound right. That sounds like a mistake," Virginia Vitello said when she opened up the mail.
Vitello said she didn't understand why her taxes were so low this year.
"There was no explanation, here it just arrived and it was just about half of what I paid last year," Vitello said.
After making some phone calls to the city and county, Vitello learned it was only half of what she owed. The county and state taxes would come in another bill and she would need to send in two payments to pay her property taxes.
Wicomico County Executive Bob Culver says all other municipalities within the county have separate tax bills, but now Salisbury property owners will too.
"A couple years ago, the mayor Jake Day decided he would like to go ahead and separate some of the joint things the county and city had been doing," Culver said.
But with around $19 million of city property taxes this year, city councilman Muir Boda says that is simply not the case. Boda says the city was forced to get their statements prepared in an expedited timeline.
"We had to hire somebody, we had to train people, we had to purchase software. We're looking at, it's going to cost the city taxpayers about $100,000 a year just for us to process this when the only thing it saved the county was the ink on the paper," Boda said.
In a letter from 2017, Executive Culver told Mayor Day the county would no longer be responsible for city taxes after June 30, 2018. But the mayor says after litigation between the two governments, that deadline was extended to this year.
In a letter from March 2018, Mayor Jake Day stated six reasons why he did not want to split the bills to avoid confusion for taxpayers.
But Vitello says it's too late.
"I don't think there should be separate bills for anyone in Wicomico County, it should be compiled together," Vitello said.
The county's property tax bill will be mailed out next week and will include the state's property taxes as well. Both city and county bills can be paid online or through the finance departments in the Government Office Building in downtown Salisbury.