PARIS — Six months ago, voters approved a change in the town’s tax collection, shifting from biannual to quarterly payment in an effort to improve the town’s cash flow. 

So far, the plan appears to have worked. According to Town Manager Amy Bernard, the town has roughly $1.3 million in cash on hand, enough to keep the Town Office running until the next tax payments are due in February.

“Cash flow issues for me would be having anything less than $400,000 in the bank with a month to go before the next taxes are due,” she said. “We haven’t even come close to that.”

By this time last year, the town was already operating in the red, Bernard said. In March, the town took out a short-term $645,000 Tax Anticipation Note to cover its expenses due to an acute shortage in available cash to pay for its operating expenses. 

By negotiating with vendors and the Oxford Hills School District to delay the town’s payments until taxes were due in May, the town did not use the loan, but it was not a position Bernard wanted to put the town in again.

At town meeting in June, voters opted to change the town’s tax payment schedule. Instead of paying half their bill in November and half in May, property owners can now pay their bill in quarterly installments in August, November, February and May.

Continuously refilling the town’s coffers with tax revenue has helped the town remain solvent, Bernard said.  

So far, residents have largely complied with the quarterly payments, although the number of delinquent accounts has risen slightly, from 19 percent last year to 22 percent so far this year. 

However, some taxpayers opted to continue paying their taxes twice a year on the old schedule and pay the interest rate charged by the town for the late payments, Bernard said. Other property owners decided to pay their entire annual tax bill up front, she said. 

The town has about 2,700 property tax accounts, of which 597 are delinquent, Bernard said. The 3 percentage-point increase in delinquencies can be partially attributed to a nearly 20 percent increase in the town’s tax rate this year, she noted.

“It’s really very negligible, considering how much our taxes went up,” Bernard said.

pmcguire@sunjournal.com