In Portsmouth, pay personal property taxes or get the boot

PORTSMOUTH

Roy Black eased his Cadillac past a green car parked in front of Walmart.

The laptop mounted on Black's front seat scanned the parked car's license plate, flashed red and sounded an alarm. They had found another one - another car whose owner hadn't paid property taxes.

Jerry Tucker hopped out of Black's passenger seat and knelt next to the suspect car as the confused driver opened her window. "I've never heard of such a thing!" the driver kept repeating as Tucker explained the overdue bill. Black took out an orange metal boot and affixed it to her front tire. This car wouldn't be going anywhere until the city got its tax money.

"It's a nice car," Black said, sizing up the Pontiac G6. "It just wasn't important to them to pay their taxes. I'll tell you what - 15 minutes ago, it became real important to pay their taxes. It moved to the top of their priority list."

In mid-January, Portsmouth Treasurer Jimmy Williams began using Black's firm to catch the owners of some 5,500 cars in the city who are more than six months overdue on their personal property taxes.

The overdue bills left Portsmouth out about $1.5 million in revenue in 2010, Williams said.

It's a problem that plagues all Virginia cities: The collection of personal property taxes routinely lags behind real estate tax collections. So Williams has enlisted the services of a private company to scan license plates for overdue accounts.

"I've got a million and a half out there I've got to get," Williams said of the money. "They've had opportunities to come in and pay or do payment plans. Sometimes that doesn't work, so we're going to this. It's our last resort."

Using high-tech cameras mounted to the trunk of the car, employees of Black's Virginia Auction Co. can scan thousands of license plates an hour. They drive through Portsmouth eight hours a day, winding through parking lots and trolling suburban streets seeking out deadbeat drivers.

Portsmouth isn't the first locality to employ scanners - both Hampton and Isle of Wight County use them - but soon, they may become a common sight in Hampton Roads. Black says he is in talks with two other local treasurer's offices, including Suffolk's, and may start collection patrols in other cities in 60 days.

The municipalities don't pay for the work, but Black's company gets a 20 percent cut of the taxes brought in.

And they're not having a hard time finding delinquents.

In a little more than a week, the process in Portsmouth netted more than 30 vehicles. One taxpayer who owed $6,000 on four cars and work trucks hadn't paid taxes for more than two years, Williams said.

On a drive though the city Thursday afternoon, the green Pontiac at Walmart was one of two overdue accounts Black and Tucker found in just over an hour.

The woman's father, who owned the Pontiac, arrived grumbling about the situation. The twosome pulled out cell phones to try to find a relative to lend money.

Tucker knelt down and looked the woman in the eye. He'd give them some time, he said, to find money and get to the treasurer's office before he called a tow truck. The family had about an hour.

"We're still an extension of their office. It's still about customer service," Tucker said. If the family could get to the treasurer's office and pay the $400 bill - overdue for more than a year - Tucker would take off the boot.

"We're not Dog the Bounty Hunter," he said. "We're not the repo guy."

But they wouldn't leave booted cars in parking lots to be vandalized, he said. Tucker and Black left the pair to sort it out and pulled through other business lots. Ten minutes later in the parking lot of a nearby Walgreens, the laptop siren sounded again, this time on a gray Nissan Sentra.

As Tucker started filling out paperwork and verifying the car's identification number, Black waited until the owner appeared.

"How much do I owe?" the owner asked.

"I don't know - that's between you and the treasurer," Black responded. The seizure notice was already taped to the man's windshield.

Tucker arranged for a taxi to take the Sentra owner home. The taxi bill would be added to his final tab.

"It's unfair," the owner said. "I'm a poor citizen. This is the way they're going to collect? By taking my car? It's bad business."

He did not give his name.

"The moral behind the whole story," Black said as he drove away, "is pay your taxes."

Meghan Hoyer, (757) 446-2293, meghan.hoyer@pilotonline.com