Consider it an extended delay.

On account of an oversight, the Kootenai County Auditor's Office is a year late on distributing $1.4 million in property tax relief to the county's taxing districts, according to county staff.

"The money was there, but action wasn't taken, for some reason," said Sandy Martinson, chief deputy clerk with the auditor's office. "We're going to have it (the funds) all labeled and ready to go with other remittances on Nov. 8, so it will finally be in the districts' coffers."

Still, as a result of the stumble, all taxing districts - including highway districts, cities, fire districts and North Idaho College - didn't get a portion of property taxes last year to help fund their services.

Amounts that districts would have received ranged from $13 for the Kidd Island Bay Sewer District to $230,000 for the city of Coeur d'Alene.

Fortunately, few seemed to notice.

"We've not discussed that here, so I'm guessing we didn't know that happened," said Ronald Sampert, chief at Kootenai County Fire and Rescue.

Martinson couldn't pinpoint just what went wrong.

Every year, the state provides property tax relief, paying property taxes on behalf of low income individuals who can't cover it themselves.

Those funds enter Kootenai County's computer system twice a year, Martinson said. It's up to the auditor's office to remit the money to taxing districts, along with the rest of property taxes, around September.

But last year there was confusion between the treasurer's and auditor's offices, she said.

The tax relief for 2008 simply sat in the computer system and wasn't distributed.

"Everyone, well, not everyone, apparently, knew this money had come in from the state and was sitting in the bank account," Martinson said. "I can't point fingers. I just know in computer land it just kind of sat there and time went on."

The auditor's office noticed last year, she added, and decided to rectify the problem by sending the funds out with other remittances next month.

She doesn't know why the county waited so long to send out the funds.

"I guess it was just knowing they were going to send it (remittances) out on the eighth," she said.

There is no way for taxing districts to know if the tax relief funds are missing, Martinson added, as those are lumped in with other property taxes, not listed as a separate line item.

Staff at East Side Highway District said they hadn't even known that the property tax relief arrangement existed.

"This is all new to me. I've been here 20 years, and I've never heard of this before," said Angela Sieverding, secretary with the district.

Kelly Brownsberger, Post Falls highway district supervisor, said the district hadn't been notified of the more than $10,000 in property tax relief it missed out on. He also didn't know the funds would be paid next month.

"I know things happen. It is nice that once they found the mistake they are getting it taken care of," Brownsberger said, adding that the funds would go toward basic road maintenance.

Chief Sampert said Kootenai County Fire and Rescue was never notified about the oversight that left out $68,958 from the fire district's property taxes.

"We didn't know about it," he said.

He added that property taxes make up roughly 80 or 90 percent of the fire district's budget.

"It would put a whole lot of folks out of work if we didn't have that money," he said. "And put a whole lot of folks without fire protection."

The city of Coeur d'Alene was notified on Monday about the funds it hadn't received, and that the check would be coming in November.

The staff's reaction was two-fold, said City Administrator Wendy Gabriel.

"One was, 'Why are we just learning about this?' and two, 'It's nice to have,'" she said.

The extra dollars will help next year's conservative budget, she said.

"For the time being, it will ensure our bills will get paid, and that we continue to provide our services and that commitments to our employees are met," she said.

Sarah Garcia, controller at NIC, said even the school's auditing firm hadn't known about the absence of $123,493 in property tax relief.

Since the school didn't know the money was missing, Garcia couldn't predict what the funds would go toward.

All districts will receive an e-mail explaining the situation soon, Martinson said.

The county has distributed property tax relief for more than 35 years, she added, with no problems before.

There won't be any again, she assured.

"We may stumble once in awhile, but we always learn from it," she said.