The City of Williamsport approved a plan to allow for installment payments for those paying city real estate taxes.

Treasurer Kevin Mackey said the idea was something talked about earlier in the year.

“This would be similar to how Williamsport Area School District is set up where the taxpayer can do two months, two months and two months,” he said. “I don’t expect a lot of people to take it but I do expect those that are headed into penalty to take it.”

What it will do is allow people to pay at the face value rather than go into penalty, he said, and the office does not see too much difference in revenue collected from taxes.

Finance chairwoman Councilwoman Liz Miele said the committee was happy to see Mackey’s initiative because it has no real cost to the city expanding the ability to offer taxpayers options when it comes paying real estate taxes.

“I think this is kind of a meaningful way to make tax payments a lot more reachable for people,” she said. “That is, in turn, a good thing.”

Councilman and Vice President Eric Beiter said Mackey described for the committee how, based upon the amount of tax revenue collected at discount versus at the base rate and also in delinquency, the plan will not impact the general operating budget.

“Most of our payments come from mortgage companies or from people trying to make the discount amount,” Mackey said. “No one wants to pay more taxes, I don’t blame them. But we should still see about 90 % of our stuff coming in at the discount amount and the rest of it will trickle in the rest of the year. This is mainly to allow for those few percent of people who get to the end of the year, to give them the other option so they are not forced to pay a penalty amount. It should not affect us and depending on how it goes it might actually get somebody in earlier.”

This does not change the date of when taxes are due, but gives the option to those who would need to make their tax payments in installments, Beiter observed.

Councilwoman Bonnie Katz asked if there was a program that the treasurer would utilize to keep track of this plan.

“Yes we have a tax program that utilizes school taxes and is used for all of the city real estate tax programs and the system will be set up the same way the school is set up and should not have to require any alterations,” Mackey said. “We need to notify our third party that we are going to be doing this,” he said.

Notifications will be sent out to the remainder of those who pay property taxes this month, he said.

“I see there is a penalty of 10 %,” Katz said.

“Yes, that is mandated by the state and we don’t get a choice in that,” Mackey said.

“There is more work involved,” Katz said. “You still have to keep on top of it.”

“It allows people to break it up, too, which is my hope,” Mackey said. “Instead of having to pay 10 % penalty at the end of the year, if they don’t make a payment instead of getting 10% on the whole thing, they only get 10% on 60 or 30% of it, which is hopefully more money in their pocket and they can put that back into the local economy,” he said.

“This will be a help to some people,” Katz said.

“Yeah, we have a lot of the older folks that come in at the end of the year that I am hoping this will help out,” Mackey said.