By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Government entities do it every year: send out thousands of pieces of mail at the same time. The Barton County Clerk's Office now sends out revenue-neutral paperwork each year. The Barton County Treasurer's Office is getting ready to mail tens of thousands of tax statements. Treasurer Jim Jordan said it's too much for a small office to handle.
"We have a printer that can print 11 pages per minute, and we have one that can print 15 pages per minute," he said. "You can do the math. We do 30,000 for real estate and oil. That doesn't include state-assessed, gas, personal property, trucks. I think we print another 6,000 in-house that we don't send to the printers. That takes us eight hours."
The treasurer's office seeks bids for the print project each year, usually choosing Iowa-based The Master's Touch, LLC. According to that company's webpage, their machines can print up to 30,000 envelopes per hour. Farming out the work actually saves the county money.
"Then you have to fold them, stuff them," Jordan said. "It costs us 61 cents to send them out, whereas in-house, it costs us $2.60 because of labor costs. Labor, envelope, ink: it's just a costly deal."
Jordan said his staff gets about two days of rest before the back side of the process begins. A machine in the treasurer's office opens each envelope and the work begins.
"Then all the mail comes back in from everybody paying their taxes," said Jordan. "We have to have that mail put in by Dec. 31. Otherwise, we have to carry it over and write down every check, every dollar amount."
This year's statements will give residents the opportunity to opt-in for digital statements next year.