Functional Illiteracy in the Non-Tax Collector's Office

We all know that despite all the evasions, prevarications, finger-pointings, and denials from the non-Tax Collector of our fair Town, most tax bills have now been received by the residents of Greenwich--more than three weeks late. Initially, the non-TC claimed that non-receipt of a bill was no reason not to stick to the August 2 deadline for payment. Shows what he knows.

The Connecticut General Statutes provide that local taxes are due and payable "not later than thirty days following the date on which rate bills for such tax are mailed...." Which means that the clusterfreak in the tax collector's office could potentially have opened the Town up to lawsuits from each and every taxpayer who did not get the full thirty-day grace period.

So now the deadline for tax payments has been pushed back three weeks, to August 23. The non-tax collector is quoted in the Local Rag as saying, "I certainly understand that people could be under the gun due to the lateness that they received it."

What kind of non-English gibberish is this? Using "due" as an adverb instead of as an adjective; the nonsensical construction, "the lateness that they received it..."--this man should not only be locked up in the stocks in front of Town Hall (if we still had them), but should be gagged as well. Let's hope The New York Times doesn't pick up on our local misfortunes and broadcast his verbal and bureaucratic ineptitude to the world at large. Greenwich already has a sorry enough reputation as a haven for knaves and thieves, from the depredations of Boss Tweed to the frauds of Marvin Frankel to the shenanigans of Walter Noel and his Fairfield-Greenwich feeder funds that helped to keep Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme afloat.

No, dear reader, we really don't need any more bad press for our Town. And we certainly don't need to be tagged as functional illiterates as well.