Clarion County is preparing for a tax sale on Sept. 19.
Megan Kerr, the county’s Tax Claim Bureau director, said at Thursday’s county commissioners meeting there were 298 properties on the list as of Tuesday. She said she expects 20 or 30 to come off the list soon.
“Some people wait until the last minute to pay their taxes,” Kerr said. The tax may be paid up to the day of the sale.
Buyers must also pay a $215 administrative fee.
Unsold properties will be placed for sale in the next judicial sale, and Kerr said all the debts are removed for that sale.
Anything that doesn’t sell goes into a repository.
“They basically sit there and collect dust until someone shows interest,” Kerr said. She added that a lot of mineral rights are in the repository and she urged anyone who doesn’t own the mineral rights to obtain them.
One such sale was approved Tuesday as a buyer purchased the mineral rights to a 10-acre section in Porter Township for a bid of $525.
“If a person doesn’t buy the mineral rights to his own property they run the risk of having someone else come in one day and start digging,” county commissioner Ted Tharan said. “Legally they own the mineral rights and there isn’t much you can do about it.”
“We are working hard to reunite the property owners and the mineral rights,” said Kerr.
The sale will begin at 9 a.m. Sept. 19 in Kerr’s office at the courthouse.
In other business at Tuesday’s meeting, the commissioners entered into a landowner agreement with the Clarion County Conservation District to participate in a state Department of Environmental Protection grant program for the construction of a settling pond and wetland to catch the effluent of an anoxic limestone bed for metal removal.
The pond is located along the southern border of the Clarion County Park.
Tharan said the runoff was from an old strip mine. The water collected in the pond but it overflowed, killing several trees below the park.
The water will run over limestone in the pond, which cleans the water. The pond water is not used in the park in any capacity.
Commissioner Wayne Brosius said the county has received its second payment of $3,733,548.39 from the federal American Rescue Plan.
Tharan said the money would be “used wisely” but did not elaborate on how the money would be used.