Posted by Brian Fending on October 21st, 2006 — Posted in Personal
I used to live in Falls Church, VA, and relocated from there to Buffalo, NY in late 2001. It was great.
So I received a collection notice from the City of Falls Church, Virginia on Tuesday. The amount was $408.46 for delinquent Personal Property Tax payment on my 1999 Chevy Malibu. To quote the next part of the letter,
Unless this obligation is resolved by October 26, 2006, we shall proceed to FILE SUIT in the Falls Church General District Court,
yada yada yada.
But the letter didn’t look like it came from Falls Church. It had the Virginia state seal instead of the city’s seal, as well as a return address in Arlington. The last time I checked, Falls Church was in Falls Church. So I didn’t call the number on the letter, but instead called (this name is for real) The Office of the Commissioner of the Revenue. I talked to a woman with a lovely accent named “Tina”, who told me that it appeared as though only $10.52 was outstanding on my account. This was not apparent in their “newer” system, but was readily available when she referred to their old AS400 production environment. Plus, according to the system, I had already paid $128.31 before leaving town and notified them that I left said town on 1 November 2001.
Great! But I would need to talk to the Office of the Treasurer about settling the amount due, and she advised that I shouldn’t let them transfer me back.
So I was transferred and spoke to “Lisa”, who couldn’t see into the ancient system and had to transfer me to her supervisor. Okay, little bump in the road. So “Dick” wasn’t very helpful, but he was informative. He let me know that Virginia state law changed on 1 September 2006 and the 70% state subsidization of this tax was repealed. So since I had a balance of $10.52, even though it was from 2001, I was now responsible for that other 70% of the original tax bill. My tax obligation, not counting what I had already paid, was to be $535.44.
I was a little irritable at this point, but Dick didn’t really care about my point that there is no way I can be held responsible for a change in the laws of a state in which I no longer live. He offered to transfer me back to The Office of the Commissioner of the Revenue. I stated my preference that he conference in the other office so we can get to the resolution together. And so he did.
Before the party started, Dick got Tina on the right page and they were prepared with a unified front. The math was presented again, my argument was futile again, and I said, “You both have been very helpful, but you don’t have the tools to help me. Who do I have to talk to?” Dick offered that I speak to the City Attorney, Roy (actual name), who would be back next Tuesday, 24 October.
When I asked what else I could do to help this along in the mean time, Tina suggested that I provide documentation from the NY DMV proving when I officially surrendered my VA registration. Thanks all around.
So I called the Arlington County Collection Unit and talked to “Rose”, who said that I *actually* owed $388.96. I didn’t want to argue the completely new amount. I told her I was going to talk to the City Attorney when he gets back on Tuesday and she advised that they wouldn’t take real legal action until 13 December. Thanks.
The DMV. I found the right form on the DMV website (MV-15) to request the Abstract of Registration Plate Record. I went to the DMV and I knew there was something wrong right away - no lines. That was just ominous. When I got to the counter, the nice lady explained that I had no need for the form, she’d just produce a duplicate registration for that plate. “But I don’t own that vehicle anymore and the plates were transferred to a new vehicle.” Oh, no. “You’ll need to call 800-CALL-DMV.” Thanks all around.
No luck the rest of the day getting through to that number. On Wednesday, I succeeded and spent two minutes and $20 ordering a paper and fax copy of my Abstract of Registration Plate Record. Form MV-15 was the right one after all. The next day, I had the fax in hand and sent a descriptive cover letter, the Abstract proving I registered the same car in NY on 23 January 2002, and an annotated key to the Abstract. I requested a call.
Today, I received a voicemail at 3:30 in the afternoon from Tina. She processed my request and made the adjustment in the system, but I’d need to call the Office of the Treasurer again to get the new amount.
So I called and got “Mark”, who advised that there were two ledger entries, one for $0.00 and the other reflecting a $12.62 credit. They actually owed me money now. But the Office of the Treasurer wouldn’t issue that check. That’s done from The Office of the Commissioner of the Revenue. Okay, another bump, but that’s okay.
I sent an email to The Office of the Commissioner of the Revenue advising my new (well, as of 2004) mailing address. I then called the Collection Unit and talked to Rose again. I advised her of the situation and asked when I could call her back to make sure this was resolved. She said next Friday at the earliest.
So the saga is finished. For now. I fear. I loath. I’m never living in Virginia again.
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Posted by Brian Fending on October 21st, 2006 — Posted in Personal
Okay, maybe this post’s title sounds a little over-the-top, but this past week has been a weather ordeal unlike anything I’ve had to deal with in this area (Buffalo, NY). There have been sensational overestimations of the trauma in some saying, “This is our Katrina!,” but that is far from reality. But practically everybody has a story from this mess, so I’ll tell mine.
The night of Thursday, 12 Oct 2006, I was working a little late and drove through a lot snow, car accidents and drivers about to cause more damage to arrive at my Southtowns home at 8:00. There was no snow on the ground at my house. This was itself an anomaly, in that the Southtowns (literally, the towns South of the city of Buffalo - hey we’re pragmatists) usually get socked with the white stuff well before and way worse than our anchor city immediately North.
My wife and I had dinner, watched a little TV (season one of Lost on DVD, I think), and turned on the back floodlight at 11:00 when the dog showed some interest in what was going on back there. And interested she was - in the five inches of snow on the ground. While she romped in her Winter playground, we marvelled at how our town must have gotten the storm second for once, and went to bed.
At midnight, we saw bright oranges flashes that appeared to be right outside our bedroom window. I was fairly convinced that some lines were coming down and, judging from the brightness and color of the light, they were down from our house and potentially starting a fire. So I rushed down, got into my kick-arse Sorel boots, put on the light Gap jacket that was sufficiently warm a few hours before, and headed toward what I tohught to be the source of the light. Nothing. My neighbor was up investigating the same thing, and while we stood there bright blue and green lights flooded the sky, apparently eminating from four miles West over Lake Erie. We thought it was perhaps transformers blowing on the other side of town, closer to the lake.
There was then a faint humming sound, thunder, some lightning flashes, the sound of trees falling… It didn’t feel safe. We estimated that her cousin’s car would probably be safe parked in the street under the large maple tree at the curb, but that my Outback needed to be moved up about five feet away from our large birch tree. The reason? It was officially Friday, 13 October 2006 by now, and apparently nobody had told the trees to shed their leaves before the first snow came. So this massive amount of really, really wet snow was stick to the leaves. No big deal, right? Well, my 80-foot tall birch tree was literally bent over unto a “U”, making it about 30 feet shorter. We talked ourselves into going back into our homes to wait it out and hopefully get some sleep.
At 6:00am, I got up, automatically got in the shower, and started getting ready for the day. At around 6:20, my coworker Michelle called my cell to ask if I’m going into work. I looked out a window to see even more snow, bent-over trees, and more limbs down than in a Roman bath. We were starting to lose the connection, so I hung up and we used SMS for the rest of our short conversation.
The time was now 6:30 and my wife turned on the local news to see how extensive the damage was. Just as the newscaster said, “Count yourself lucky if you’ve still got power,” the TV went dead and everything else did, too. My boss lives really close to the office, so I thought he would have the best sense of what was going on near work and whether or not the office was opening. At the words, “Uh, don’t worry about coming in. If anything changes, I’ll call you. I need to get the fallen trees and 15 inches of snow out of my driveway now…”
[Call to NYSEG: "There is no estimated time of repair."]
So that was that. It was cold. We toughed it out for a while, but then went to our friends’ place around the way to keep warm by a fire all night. At around 10:30 that night, their power came back. Excellent! As we drove home, all 2600 feet, fewer and fewer street lamps were lit. Of course, no power in the Fending household. The dog was happy to see us - more body heat in bed.
[Call to NYSEG: "Estimated time of repair is noon on Monday, October 16th."]
The next day was similar, and we dropped our cell phone with our friends around the corner before heading to get a bite to eat (THAT was fun - try find an eatery the day after a power failure…), stop at Wegman’s for some supplies, and head back to the warmth of our friends’ house for dinner and an evening of waiting for our power lines to come alive. We got home around midnight, still had no power, and vowed to give it another day.
[Call to NYSEG: "Estimated time of repair is 10pm on Tuesday, October 17th."]
By noon Sunday, we were on our way to Rochester for what we thought might be a couple of days of long commutes back to Buffalo. We sat down to dinner, and fully expected to sleep in a warm bed, just not our own. At this point, I called our house and got the answering machine. By midnight, we were home to a warm house.
The next day, the rest of the region was fairing a bit worse than us and carbon monoxide deaths grew to number in the teens. As I write this, there are still towns in our county without power, and politicians have begun the finger-pointing that they do so well. (Not surprisingly, the harshest of fingers are in the towns with the weakest response. Well, it is an election year.)
So that’s more or less the story. Oh, and I think we’re going to lose the 45-ft tall silver maple in the back yard. But if that’s the only casualty in our household, I think we’ll count ourselves lucky.
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