Tyler attorney rolls out the details of upcoming tax sale

Tyler tax attorney, Tab Beall, presented the Cass County Commissioners Court with information on an upcoming tax sale due to the county’s largest multi-year delinquency, the J.C. Lawson Estate in Atlanta.

Ten tracts of varied acreage owned by the estate are slated for the sale. The delinquent taxes owed to Cass County are around $71,000 and $225,000 is owed to Atlanta Independent School District.

“Normally when we take a person to tax sale, they have one maybe two properties. In any Sheriff ’s sale, we have a minimum bid. We have to recover all of your taxes, court costs, Sheriff ’s fees, legal publication fees, and that becomes the minimum bid in a Sheriff ’s sale.”

“In this suit, you have ten different tracts of property.”

Beall described ways to group the properties to be sold in consideration of road access and to avoid a land-locked property situation, and disclosed that some of the property was previously leased to Gibson Recycling in the 1990s. Gibson Recycling had a grant from the state which gave the company one dollar for every tire they received.

“According to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, they had 36 million tires out there.”

He said of the original effort, “Part of their remediation and environmental clean-up, they removed about 60% of those tires but 40% of them are still out there.”

From the Commission’s report, Beall went on to say, “The property where they did not remove the tires, they pretty much reclaimed the property which I interpret to mean they buried them.”

Commissioner Paul Cothren asked Beall over which tracts the 14 million tires might be buried. Beall cited attempts to get that information from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality but was not successful. He referred Cothren to the commission for further information.

According to the Associated Press in 2002, it was the largest tire pile in the state and possibly the country with stacks of tires towering 25 feet in the air and posing an extreme fire hazard.

When state officials prepared to bury the whole lot, the idea was opposed by business leaders in Atlanta as they feared underground fires and water contamination.

Beall wanted to make the county and interested parties aware that the purchase of property through a tax sale is on an as-is basis, and the county would not be responsible for remediation.

“If you’re the only one that wants to buy that property, you make the minimum bid, it’s yours. If two or more people want to buy that property, then it becomes auction bidding, highest bid wins.”

For non-homestead properties like these, there is a six-month period of redemption in which the owner can satisfy the debt and reclaim the property. For homestead properties, there is a two-year redemption period in which the owner can satisfy the debt and reclaim the property.

“If you’re buying a tax sale property of somebody’s home and there’s a hole in the roof, you can fix the hole in the roof but don’t put in a backyard swimming pool. They’ve got two years to redeem. You can get reimbursed for necessary repairs like fixing the hole in the roof. You don’t get reimbursed for removing the Formica top in the kitchen and putting in granite countertops because that’s not a necessary improvement.”

“The clock starts running when the deed is recorded which is generally two to three weeks after the sale.”

The sale of the ten tracts and other properties will be Tuesday, Apr.7 on the north side of the Old Courthouse in Linden at 10 a.m.

Tax sales, by law, are on the first Tuesday of each month and must be between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.