A tax hike is catching homeowners in one neighborhood by surprise. A paperwork mistake is now putting a spike in the dollars due in the Westin Hills subdivision.

Matt Manhart lives in that subdivision, near 150th and Fort and he recently got wind of the tax bump.

"It should make a difference of $245 alone just for our house payment," he says.

Westin Hills was annexed by a sanitary improvement district more than a year-and-a-half ago.

The Douglas County assessor says the SID filed the paperwork at the wrong office, so the mill levy mistakenly didn't go up last year on 145 homes. That cost the SID $114,000 in uncollected taxes.

Tom Lind, with the assessor's office, says, "It's just one of those freak things that happened. It never happens."

Annexation into an SID means homeowners pay $887 more per year for every $100,000 of value on their homes but Manhart says he doesn't like being charged back taxes for the months before the mistake was discovered.

He says, "The mistake was not made by us. My thing is you don't pass the mistake onto us. You turn around and eat your mistake, correct it, and that makes everybody happy."

But county officials say that the paperwork mistake doesn't forgive the missed back taxes.

This also raises a legal question that has yet to be answered. That's the question of whether the homeowners should be considered delinquent on a tax increase they didn't know they owed.

Dennis Rookstool, with the Treasurer's Office says, "To that question we don't have an answer yet. We can't find any provisions that relate to this so we've asked the county attorney's assistance."

While the county waits for a legal opinion, Manhart says he's busy telling his neighbors about the situation.

"I've been trying to let as many know as I can but I think they're confused," he says.

An attorney for the SID says all the proper paperwork for the annexation was sent to the county, so he doesn't know who dropped the ball.