Some Baker County residents saw an unwelcome surprise when they read their property tax statements this week.

The source is a $100 annual fee from the Blue Mountain Translator District, which supplies TV signals to rural areas, and it has prompted at least a few dozen phone calls to the District and to the Baker County Assessor’s Office.

Oregon law allows the TV district to include the fee on tax bills for owners who either don’t pay the fee or fail to fill out a waiver form saying they don’t use the TV signals.

But District officials acknowledge that some property owners who returned the waiver had the $100 fee added to their tax bill in error.

“We have received a large volume of calls since the statements came out,” said Shawn Berry, assistant assessor. “We give them Blue Mountain’s contact info.”

District administrator Alex McHaddad said his office has received at least three dozen calls from property owners who contend the $100 was improperly included on their tax bill.

He is working on refunding the money to those property owners.

“I think about a half a dozen people have been improperly billed that we have been able to determine so far,” McHaddad said.

He said several callers had not returned the waiver, however.

In those cases, the District’s policy is to not refund the money because it is the property owner’s responsibility to return the form.

Esther Young, who has owned property on Ben Dier Lane in Baker Valley for 12 years, said this is the first year her tax bill has included the $100 fee. She said she has always returned her waiver form.

“I don’t want to pay it,” Young said. “I sent my form in like I was supposed to.”

McHaddad said Young is among the property owners entitled to a refund.

But Young is concerned that there are people who may not realize they have had the fee added to their property tax bill or just not question it and not pursue getting a refund that they are entitled to.

“I’m concerned about how many people are getting wrongly billed — especially elderly people,” she said. “It’s not right.”

See more in the Oct. 27, 2017, issue of the Baker City Herald.