The amount of protested taxes in Flathead County is up ten-fold from last year, due to a statewide reappraisal that resulted in exponential property-tax increases, especially for waterfront property.

Protested taxes for 2009 totaled $1.86 million. That compares to $151,265 in 2008, County Treasurer Adele Krantz said.

“This is a substantial difference,” she added.

Payment of taxes under protest sets the designated money aside in a fund until the appeal has been resolved by the Tax Appeal Board, the Department of Revenue or the courts, Krantz said.

If the decision is in favor of the taxpayer, the Treasurer’s Office will send a refund to the taxpayer.

More than 7,500 Flathead County taxpayers asked for reviews, but so far, only 2,761 taxpayers have paid their 2009 taxes under protest, Krantz said.

“That’s all that’s been sent in,” she said. “What happened to the other 4,800 [taxpayers]? I don’t know, but it could’ve been way worse.”

Not surprisingly, school districts that include large amounts of lakefront property had the largest numbers of protesters. In Whitefish, 556 taxpayers protested roughly $421,640 in property taxes assessed in 2009. In the Kalispell school districts, 503 taxpayers protested a total of $446,319.

About 440 taxpayers in the Somers and Lakeside area protested $191,244. In the Columbia Falls school district, 353 taxpayers protest a total of more than $486,580 and in Bigfork 235 taxpayers protested close to $100,000.

The amount of delinquent taxes also is up, but that increase was substantially less, Krantz said.

Of the $65.3 million in first-half taxes billed in 2009, close to $5 million has not been paid yet. That’s a 7.65 percent delinquency rate and compares to 6.77 percent in delinquent taxes in the first half of 2008, when about $4.2 million of the $61.7 million billed for the first half weren’t paid.

A total of 57,128 tax bills were sent in 2009, totaling $130.6 million in total taxes. There currently are 6,110 delinquent tax bills, or 10.7 percent of the total number of 2009 tax bills.

 Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com