| Michael J. McMahon, City Collector |  |
59 Court St., First Floor
Westfield, MA 01085
(413)572-6229
Hours: Monday-Friday 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
The Collector’s Office primary responsibility is to collect real estate, personal property and motor vehicle excise tax, as well as the water, sewer and waste management fees that appear on the combined utility bill. The City operates on a fiscal year that runs from July 1 to June 30. Real estate and personal property bills are mailed quarterly with the bills being issued on July 1, October 1, January 1 and April 1. The bills are due thirty days from the date of issue.
Motor vehicle excise bills for those vehicles that are garaged in the City of Westfield as of January 1 are mailed out during late February or early March. There are other smaller mailings done for vehicles that are purchased during the year. The bills are due thirty days from the date of issue. The combined utility bill is a quarterly bill with taxpayers being billed based upon whatever city services they use. The City is divided up into three billing sections so with bills being issued quarterly there is a combined utility bill issued for a section of the City each month. These bills are due sixty days from the date of issue.
A return envelope is enclosed with each bill that is addressed to a post office box for our lock box service. The lock box service is provided by Century Bank of Medford, MA. The mail is opened, sorted and then posted to a file which is electronically forwarded to the City for posting to taxpayer’s individual accounts. Checks are deposited daily. All routine mail is handled in this fashion. Any correspondence that is out of the ordinary is returned to the Collector’s Office for individual attention. As the City went from a semi annual to a quarterly billing cycle during Fiscal Year 2003, the lock box service has worked out well as the number of real estate and personal property bills mailed per year has effectively doubled.
The office also helps taxpayers resolve problems with their payments, prepares municipal lien certificates, processes payments that are received by other City departments, processes refunds for the bills listed above where appropriate, and works closely with the Treasurer’s Office and Law Department with the collection of overdue taxes up to and including conducting auctions of properties that the City has foreclosed upon.
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