How can we trust what our elected officials tell us?

It’s been said the only sure things in life are death and taxes, and you dearly hope neither of them goes awry.

We can’t speak to the death aspect of this adage, but the taxes have most definitely gone sideways for Valencia County property owners.

Shortly after the 2025 tax bills hit the mail in early November, property owners realized something was very wrong. Bills had jumped up by hundreds if not thousands of dollars, far out pacing the notices of estimated values issued by the county in the spring of 2025.

It didn’t take long for questions to be posted to social media and calls and emails began coming into the News-Bulletin. What happened? Why were the bills so high? At the same time, callers were bombarding the Valencia County treasurer and assessor’s offices with those same questions.

According to the Valencia County treasurer’s office website, 209,000 tax bills are sent out annually. That’s a lot of taxpayers, even assuming some of those bills go to the same person for multiple properties. With that many people questioning what they owe, you would think someone in the county administration would take the proverbial bull by the horns and let the public know the problem was being investigated and a solution was coming. Or at least acknowledgment there was a problem, a big one.

We understand at the early stages of a crisis, there are few, if any, answers. What went wrong isn’t always immediately obvious, especially when you’re talking about something as Byzantine as property taxes.

It wasn’t until Wednesday, Nov. 12, that Valencia County Treasurer Ron Saiz posted a statement on the county’s Facebook page acknowledging the error — an incorrect 22 percent increase to tax bills. By then, the News-Bulletin had already interviewed Valencia County Assessor Celia Dittmaier, who saw a $600 increase to her own tax bill.

So the question has to be asked — would the problem have been publicly acknowledged if there wasn’t going to be a front-page story?

As county employees and elected officials asked the same questions and felt the same dread as every other taxpayer, no one thought to speak up and offer some empathy? Say, “We know this is bad. We’re in the same boat and we’re paddling just as hard as you.”

A week later, another post on Facebook assured the public there would be revised tax bills — eventually — and then the Monday before Thanksgiving, the treasurer announced escrow payments were temporarily halted. For many taxpayers, it was too little too late, with their mortgage company having already paid the 2025 bill and recalculated their 2026 monthly payments based on the incorrect, inflated tax amount.

“What do we tell our mortgage (company)? They’re trying to charge me $700 more on Jan. 1 because of the tax mistake,” one taxpayer commented on a county Facebook post.

The answer seemed to be a corrected bill from the county. The hope was the new bills would be enough for the mortgage companies to roll back the hefty escrow increases some taxpayers were going to see.

As December trickled away, the treasurer again posted on Facebook on Dec. 12 announcing corrected bills would be sent out in the next few weeks, first half payments would now be due Jan. 30, 2026, and payments would be backdated to Dec. 10 to remove any penalties and interest.

What dropped into mailboxes just after the first of the year was the ultimate lump of coal for taxpayers — “corrected” bills with even more errors than the November bills.

Again, despite our elected officials receiving the same confusing, mangled bill, there were crickets from 444 Luna Avenue.

It’s hard to admit you made a mistake. It’s uncomfortable to address errors when you don’t have all the facts yet. But as elected officials, you have to say something. You have to assure the public you are seeing what they see, and you have to do it quickly and often.

At this point, the damage is done and we don’t mean just the financial hit residents have taken. Trust in many of our county elected officials has been lost, as it should be, and it’s going to be a hard road ahead to gain it back.