Warren County taxpayers who paid their taxes but were erroneously listed as delinquent on the Aug. 10 tax sale list that appeared in Monday’s The Vicksburg Post will receive a formal apology from the Warren County Board of Supervisors through an ad, the supervisors said Wednesday.

County Administrator John Smith said the apology will include the names of those who paid their taxes, but were misidentified as delinquent.

He added a corrected delinquent tax list will run Aug. 17 and 24, the last two Mondays before the annual sale, which is conducted the last Monday in August.

Smith said the new list will also contain the properties of delinquent taxpayers whose names were left off the original list.

County officials said the errors on Monday’s list were made by new employees who prepared the delinquent list for the ad.

Smith said county officials ran an ad in early July reminding people they had until Aug. 3 to pay their taxes and avoid being included on the delinquent list.

“When they (the tax collection employees) generated the information to go to the paper to be printed, it was based on those who had not paid by July 17,” Smith said. “They were too early. This was the first time for these employees and mistakes were made.”

While the employees were preparing the list, he said, “They didn’t run it in the proper sequence … so I’ve got a whole list of new people (who are delinquent) who ain’t been published yet. We may have more than 400 people added to the list.”

Smith said people erroneously listed in the ad complained to Supervisors Bill Lauderdale and Richard George, adding Tax Collector Antonia Flaggs Jones’ office “got a large volume of complaints.”

“The complainers wanted to know what we’re going to do (to correct the problem),” he said, adding one of the people who complained to the board wanted the names of the wronged taxpayers included in the ad.

Ward 3 Supervisor Charles Selmon suggested running an ad with a general statement apologizing for the error, but without names.

“You start listing names again, you’re going to be adding fuel to the fire, because a lot of people don’t want their names mentioned about the possibility they were late paying their taxes,” he said.

Ward 5 Supervisor Richard George said the people mentioned in error paid their taxes on time “and they have already been advertised not having paid.”

“They realize that we will run another ad that will correct the list, which they will not be on,” he said. But the wronged taxpayers, he added, also know there will be no correction in the new list clearing them.

He said listing the people who had paid as delinquent was “an insult to a person’s reputation by the very body that’s taking your money.”

If the county can generate 10 pages front and back in the newspaper accusing people of not paying their taxes, he said, “We ought to be able to generate a list of those who were erroneously advertised and correct it in the paper one time.”