GREENWICH — Even when he’s off the clock, Greenwich comptroller Peter Mynarski is thinking about town finances.
“In the past, I’ve usually gone on and looked to see if my name is on there or my relatives, but I went to look for town of Greenwich checks and I was stunned that there was hundreds of checks out there,” Mynarski told the Board of Estimate and Taxation on June 7.
Mynarski got in touch with the state treasurer’s office last summer and, after months of back and forth, the town has since received $62,851.06 from 227 unclaimed checks dating back to the 1990s.
“I was happy because I put a lot of hours into it,” Mynarski told Greenwich Time on June 8. “Basically, it’s the taxpayers’ money and it’s like found money… I was happy that the number of hours I put into it were fruitful.”
Mynarski was able to submit a bulk application to the state, since doing each check one by one would be too tedious. After working to confirm that the town was the rightful owner, he ended up getting a check in January for about $2,000 and another one last month for about $60,000.
The unclaimed property program is designed to reunite rightful owners and heirs to property that has been remitted to the Office of the Treasurer. Business entities remit these items — like savings account balances, uncashed checks, bonds, money orders and more — to the state after the business loses contact with a customer.
All of Greenwich’s reclaimed checks were several years old, Mynarski said — so old that many of the town staff or bank employees who originally handled them have since changed jobs.
The checks fell into four main categories: Accounts receivable to the town, checks cut to the Town Clerk, alarm fees that homeowners paid to the Greenwich Police and parking violation fees.
The payments were made out to the town and, for some reason, they were never cashed and banks sent the funds to the state.
The Greenwich checks ranged from nearly $9,000 at the top end to just 31 cents at the bottom, Mynarski said. Many of these checks were for between $10 and $20 for parking fines issued many years ago.
Mynarski said that the process was easier than he initially thought it would be and that he will probably do another batch application some time this summer to see what else is in the unclaimed property fund.
The unclaimed property site can be reached at https://ctbiglist.com/.
