Floyd County accidentally included the Galena Digital Library property in a tax sale. Litigation is pending to resolve the issue. News and Tribune photo by Brooke McAfee
The accidental listing of a library in a tax sale by Floyd County’s own government has led to a complicated situation for county officials — a situation that a state legislator seeks to prevent from happening again in Indiana. The Galena Digital Library in Floyd County was included in a tax sale in 2023, leading the Illinois-based Sabre Investments, LLC, to pay $8,000 at an auction for the county- owned property. The tax sale list and subsequent tax sale certificate were signed off by the county’s treasurer and auditor.
The out-of-state investment group is now seeking ownership of the library property.
The case remains pending in court as Floyd County argues that the property was mistakenly included in the tax sale due to unpaid stormwater fees.
In response, State Rep. Ed Clere, R-New Albany, introduced an amendment to House Bill 1427 stipulating that a “tract or item of real property that a political subdivision owns may not be sold at a tax sale.” The Indiana House’s Ways and Means Committee adopted the amendment into the pending legislation on Wednesday.
“The Galena branch library should have never been eligible for tax sale,” Clere said. “This legislation won’t undo that mistake, but it will keep the same sort of thing from happening again anywhere in the state.”
If it becomes law, this will “protect taxpayers and the public at large,” Clere said.
“When officials or employees or vendors working for local elected officials make a mistake, taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook,” he said.
Tax sale process
Tax lien sales involve the sale of real estate property to pay delinquent property taxes and fees. Successful bidders will receive a lien on the property through a tax sale certificate issued by the county auditor.
Clark County Treasurer Monty Snelling said the tax sales are a “long process, but it’s not a hard process.”
“It’s a very open, transparent process,” he said.
Snelling said after being late on property taxes for three installments, taxpayers will receive a notice of how much they owe and what is required to keep their property out of the tax sale.
“And then our office works with anybody we can work with as far as preventing them from being on the tax sale,” he said. “Sometimes we set up payment plans for them … anything we can do to help them, that’s been our general rule.”
The county might start off with about 500 properties eligible for a tax sale, but that number usually decreases significantly.
“By the time we actually reach the tax sale, it’s usually down to a couple hundred because people will then come in and pay their taxes — pay their penalty,” Snelling said. “Some don’t want to see their name in the paper, so they’ll come in and pay their taxes and so forth.”
If the county cannot help the taxpayer, the property will go to a tax sale, which involves public auctions that occur in the fall. While successful bidders receive a certificate of sale, they do not immediately receive the title for the property.
Instead, there is a oneyear redemption period that allows the owner to pay the past taxes or fees and retain ownership of the property. After that period passes, the buyer can then file a petition in court requesting the county auditor to issue a tax deed for the property.
A county does not receive any money from the tax sale other than the taxes are due, Snelling said.
SRI Services, Inc. handles tax sales for 86 counties in Indiana, including Floyd and Clark counties. SRI President Zach Hughes said while the county collects payments related to the sale, the company assists with administrative tasks, mailing required notices, printing newspaper notices, assisting with legal documents and conducting the sale itself.
“Typically we go back and forth to ensure that the list is properly updated with any parcel that should be removed, or, if there is not a parcel payment prior to the sale, that the numbers are accurate,” Hughes said. “So we go back and forth at each step of the process to make sure everything is as accurate as possible.”
Sometimes the sale takes place in person, and other times it occurs through SRI’s online auction system.
Snelling finds that buyers in the Clark County tax sales are often local.
“It’ll be people maybe owning an adjoining property,” he said. “It might be a local investor that might want to buy one or two to try to make some money eventually on them.”
But in other cases, out-ofstate groups might buy 15 to 20 properties through tax sales as an investment.
“I don’t particularly care for the process, but you can’t really bar anybody,” Snelling said. “Now, if they have purchased something in the past and not followed through, I can bar that investor. If it’s someone who owes property tax on another property and hasn’t paid it, I can bar that person. I try to make it as fair as I possibly can and stay within the state statute.”
Sabre Investments, the group seeking ownership of the Galena Digital Library, also bids on many other properties in counties across Indiana, including both Floyd and Clark counties. The company is based in Carbondale, Illinois.
For Floyd County’s 2023 tax sale, the company is listed as the successful bidder for 19 other properties, according to documents from SRI. The list also shows buyers from many other out-of-state investors, including ones from Tennessee, Oregon, Maryland, Texas and California.
Court documents show four cases resolved in 2024 where Sabre Investments’ petition for issuance of the tax deed was granted in Floyd County.
Galena Library
Floyd County is now seeking to prevent the sale of the Galena Digital Library to the investment group. The Floyd County Library branch opened in 2018 after extension renovations to a home dating to the 1860s, and the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Floyd County Library Executive Director Melissa Merida and the Floyd County Library Board of Trustees recently issued a statement in response to the tax sale issue: “The historic home site of our Galena Digital Library Branch is a county-owned property that we are blessed to be able to utilize as a library location. We are committed to helping the county in navigating the process to resolve the current situation and to preserve library services for the community members within that area of the county.”
Sabre Investments filed its petition for issuance of the tax deed in October of 2024, and Floyd County filed a response in opposition to the petition in January of this year.
Kristi Fox, legal counsel for the Floyd County Commissioners, argues that the sale should be invalidated due to the unintentional nature of the property’s inclusion in the tax sale list.
The county did not redeem the property within the one-year redemption period and became aware of the “property’s errant inclusion in the tax sale process when [the] petitioner filed its tax deed petition,” Fox said in the county’s response.
Clere said while it is common to see out-of-state investors acquiring properties through a tax sale, he has never seen another instance of a publicly owned property being sold through this process.
“The situation is unusual, if not unique, but it’s not uncommon for out-of-state investors to buy tax certificates at tax sales and ultimately receive a deed if there is no redemption within the redemption period,” he said.
He said there needs to be accountability, and someone should have caught the mistake along the way.
“There was plenty of opportunity for the county to correct the mistake while it was still a $8,000 mistake rather than whatever it’s going to end up costing taxpayers,” he said.
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