When 40 percent of the tax statements sent out to people in the Liberty area of Putnam County were returned because they couldn't be delivered to the address listed, county officials knew something was wrong.
"I don't know this for a fact, but I'm assuming it's because of the address changes [Putnam County] 911 made last year," Chief Tax Deputy Rob Fewell.
Tax statements not making it to the right front door is just the latest in a series of kinks in the county's plan to update its addresses to comply with state and national standards.
In 2013, when Putnam County 911 changed a series of addresses, residents learned of the change from a letter they got in the mail.
Many residents expressed frustration with their new addresses and asked officials to change it back. But they weren't changed.
The next step in the plan, officials say, is updating everyone's government documents to reflect their new addresses. County Clerk Brian Wood thinks this process could take years to complete.
"We never received anything from the 911 center that said anyone's address had changed," Fewell said.
Fewell said the number of tax statements being returned to his office this year isn't an unusually high number. But it is unusual that most of them came from the same geographic clusters.
"It's not a terrible load," Fewell said, "but it's a lot that has came back at one time."
He estimated Thursday as he sent out the remaining 10 percent of the tax statements that more than 200 statements had already been returned to his office. He expected more to trickle in during the coming days.
Fewell suspects the reason so many are bouncing back to his office this year is because people have forgotten to contact his office to let him know their address changed.
Even if they haven't actually moved from their home, about 80 percent of unincorporated areas of Putnam County received new addresses.
People of Putnam County who don't receive their tax statements in the mail by July 31 are advised to call the tax office at 304-586-0204.
And while they're at it, County Clerk Brian Wood hopes they'll call his office, too.
Every two years, the Secretary of State's office gives his office a list of people who have an address listed on their voter registration card that's different than the one listed on their driver's license.
This list is a part of the National Change of Address and is distributed to county clerks in fall.
"There's no easy way of importing those addresses in," Wood said. He wishes there was a "magic thumb drive" that he could use to fix everyone's documents, but he can't.
Instead, Wood said people risk the chance of losing their voter registration card if they don't update their information and if a series of checks in the system don't catch it next year.
First, people who show up on the list given to Wood will have their voter registration card put on inactive status, he said. This doesn't mean they can't vote, but they'll be asked to update their address the next time they do.
If they don't vote in the next two federal elections, the primary in May 2016 and the general election just six months later, people will be taken off the rolls of people who can vote.
"We'll have voters that will get voter registration card just to have ID to get driver's license with no intention of going and voting ever," Wood said.
Wood recently asked the County Commission to combine several election precincts, which, in one instance, would result in a magisterial district change.
If this were approved by the County Commission, Wood said everyone in those precincts would have to be notified of the change and he could probably check to see if their addresses need updated during that process.
Mailing out a postcard to the entire county or to everyone whose address was changed by Putnam County 911 would be too expensive. Instead, he said officials will wait for people to manually update their documents, even if they know someone lives in an area that experienced address changes.
In 2013, there were about 16,000 people included on the NCOA list given to Wood by the Secretary of State. Before that, in 2011, the number was significantly less at about 1,300.
"I hope it's less than 16,000 this year," he said laughing. "We do it with smiles on our faces, but it's just one of those necessary things."
Reach Jake Jarvis at jake.jarvis@wvgazette.com, 304-348-7905 or follow @NewsroomJake on Twitter.