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Atascosa County tax office reports lawsuits, tax sales and multimillion-dollar JP resolutions
Summary
Tax office and justice-of-the-peace collection report covering July 2023–July 2024 detailed mailing procedures, litigation steps, tax sales and collection totals; officials said the county filed 93 tax lawsuits and reported active accounts totaling about $8.3 million.
Ronald Rocha presented Atascosa County’s annual delinquent tax and justice-of-the-peace (JP) collections report for the period covering July 2023 through July 2024 before the commissioners court.
Rocha said the office’s annual cycle starts with October tax statements mailed by the tax office and moves through multiple notices and penalty accrual beginning Feb. 1. He described a May 33.07 notice that alerts remaining delinquent taxpayers that their accounts could be turned over for collections on July 1.
“The first of the tax report covering July 2023 through July 2024,” Rocha said, and he walked the court through targeted mailings, skip-trace work for bad addresses, title research before filing suit and the county’s litigation and tax-warrant procedures.
Rocha reported that from July 2023 to July 2024 the office filed 93 lawsuits totaling about $546,000 and executed four tax warrant seizures that produced roughly $240,000 when combined across taxing entities. He said the county conducted three tax sales during the year and described resales, struck-off properties and cancellations.
On JP collections, Rocha said the three JP courts assigned to the collections team processed hundreds of accounts and citations; for example, during a recent month the office received 475 accounts totaling about $151,000 and collected roughly $36,000 on those accounts. He also said the office mailed 7,543 letters for a single month, updated hundreds of addresses, and handled thousands of inbound and outbound calls to resolve accounts.
Rocha described active accounts as “over 25,000 at 8,300,000” and summarized that the collections work removes resolved accounts from the books, freeing up accurate tax rolls.
The commissioners asked procedural questions about judgments and execution; Rocha explained that judgments can be released when amounts are paid and that constitutional and statutory limits prevent negotiation of the tax amounts themselves. The court later moved to accept the report and related items in the packet.
The judge and several commissioners thanked Rocha for the presentation and invited follow-up meetings to review individual JP accounts and collection breakdowns.
Next steps: the court accepted the report and instructed staff to provide additional breakdowns by JP upon request.
