The Arlington treasurer’s office expects to be chasing millions of dollars worth of delinquent payments over the coming year, roughly in line with recent norms.
That was the projection of Treasurer Carla de la Pava when on March 5 she discussed with County Board members her office’s budget plan for the fiscal year starting next July.
For fiscal 2023, which ended last June, the office collected $40 million in delinquencies, ranging from real-estate and vehicle taxes to ambulance bills and parking tickets.
The office sent out about 200,000 delinquent and final notices for the fiscal year, and took over 93,000 enforcement actions, that included wage liens, bank liens “and sometimes friendly visits,” de la Pava told County Board members.
The efforts paid off: Last August, the treasurer’s office reported a fiscal-year delinquency rate of just 0.157 percent, down from 0.161 percent the year before.
(To put that number, likely the lowest in Virginia, in perspective, Arlington’s tax-delinquency rate in the early 1980s was about 8 percent, or about 50 times as high. De la Pava and her predecessor, Frank O’Leary, have spent the last 40 years successively cutting the rate.)
The biggest current challenge in delinquencies, de la Pava told County Board members, is personal-property tax on vehicles. Both the value of vehicles and the tax on them spiked during the pandemic, leaving some unable to pay.
“We’ve got our hands full right now” collecting vehicle taxes that were due last fall, the treasurer said.
The treasurer’s office is one of Arlington’s five constitutional offices, whose duties are enshrined in the Virginia Constitution and whose work is supported by a mix of state and local funding. The others are sheriff, clerk of the Circuit Court, commonwealth’s attorney and commissioner of revenue.
County Manager Mark Schwartz’s 1,100-page, $1.6 billion proposed fiscal 2025 budget includes an $8.4 million budget for the treasurer’s office, up 3 percent from the current fiscal year, and a decline of one full-time position, to a total of 61.
