Marblehead board discusses sending tax bills through email

MARBLEHEAD – Don’t delete that Spam – it might be your real estate tax bill!Well, not yet – but the idea came up at the selectmen’s 90-minute budget session Friday morning.Selectman William Woodfin asked Director of Finance John McGinn if he had considered sending real estate tax bills via email instead of snail-mail.”Is it legal?” he asked. “The tax bills cost us $25,000 in postage.””Right now we have a legal obligation to mail those bills,” McGinn told him, noting that Marblehead does save money on tax bills by sending them out twice a year instead of four times a year as most communities do.Marblehead already puts the Town Warrant, Town Report and Finance Committee report to Town Meeting online and Woodfin noted that those postings receive a lot of viewing. They are topped, however, by the number of hits on the town’s online property assessment records.As usual, selectmen have good reason to seek any savings they can find.Selectmen approved $26.1 million in requests for the budgets they oversee, an increase of $1.6 million over last year.The major increases include $860,000 in group insurance costs, $260,203 in interest charges, $235,400 for capital outlays, $204,000 in salaries and a special $110,770 to cover retirement expenses for the fire chief, superintendent of recreation, parks and forestry and town engineer.