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r' ply% Mr. Holmes said he hopes the City would have a general meeting inviting the public to come hear about the Don't Bag It Program. We would have Dr. Bill Knoop, who is the foremost person in this part of the United States, to come up and present the program, along with Burk Whitehead who has written a book, _and has done a fantastic job, on home composting. Mr. Holmes stressed the need to get people familiar with the aspect of the program before the law is in place. On the request of Councilman Brown, City Manager Malone said he has requested that Thomas Hunt III to come before the Council go over the — delinquent property and property that has been sold at the court house steps, property that is held in trust in various categories. Thomas Hunt III, serving as the Delinquent Tax Collection Attorney for the City of Paris, came forward telling the Council that he is handling approximately 200 - 250 active cases for the City of Paris. Mr. Hunt said the process that they go through in a delinquent tax suite is, the delinquent tax accounts are turned over to the delinquent tax attorneys on July 1st of each year that is when the 15% penalty is added on the tax roll to cover the delinquent cost, at this point he sends out a first demand letter to all the account, followed up by a second demand letter within 60 to 90 days. Mr. Hunt said that after the first demand letter there is various responses, some will come in and pay their taxes, some will come in that needs additional time to pay, so they are allowed to pay the taxes over a three year period. Mr. Hunt said that some people come in saying their property is a homestead and file proper affidavits so those taxes are deferred until that person no longer lives there, or is deceased, this does not stop the penalty and interest from being accrued, but the collection procedure is stopped. Mr. Hunt said this also applies to people who is in the nursing homes, this is still considered their homestead. After the letters are mailed out and there are responses, or non - responses, then it is necessary for suites to be filed, do lien searches and title searches to the property, a piece of property on the tax roll may be in one persons name, and there may be several brothers and sisters involved, so to file a law suite we have to join all parties that has an interest in the property which includes heirs undivided interest as well as any lien holders, which would include any bank, a judgement lien holder, any one that has a interest in the property. At this point, there have been a few cases where we come across the situation where the FDIC or FSLIC has interest in the property that also puts a halt to the process. Occasionally there is a bankruptcy involved, and if there is a bankruptcy involved, we have to go through bankruptcy court. After he get all these people in the lawsuit, and have them served, then we proceed with the lawsuit. If there are unknown heirs, or if we have a name, but no address, the law requires us to make a diligence search to try and find out if there is an owner available for us to serve, if we can't find anyone after the search, upon filing affidavits indicating that, then we have citation by publication in the newspaper, or sometimes citation by posting the notes. After this step, we proceed with the law suite, after all the parties are in, have trial setting and get a judgement for the amount of taxes. When we do this, we also intervene all of the other entities. After obtaining the judgement many of which are default situations, and we have no one to appear.