County has backlog dating to 2016
The Putnam Legislature on Tuesday (Aug. 6) ratified the results of a tax auction that netted the county $2.2 million.
Buyers on July 10 bid on all but 14 of 161 properties that had been foreclosed because of unpaid taxes from 2014 and 2015. Fifteen of the properties were in Philipstown.
Michael Lewis, who has been Putnam’s finance commissioner since June 2023, told the Physical Services Committee on July 23 that the auction was the county’s first since 2020, when the pandemic hit. He said that the county still has an inventory of $30 million worth of foreclosed properties dating to 2016.
“We were one of the worst counties in the state when it came to filing tax liens,” he said. “Even before COVID, we were about three or four years behind.”
