There are hundreds of thousands of dollars that belong to North Texas cities and counties going unclaimed right now. Some of that money has been sitting in Austin since the early 1990s.
NBC 5 checked the Texas Comptroller's website and found $103,656.54 unclaimed by county and city agencies in Tarrant County and $85,001.61 unclaimed in Dallas County. Collin County agencies have yet to claim $18,858.09 and Denton has $13,781.40 sitting in Austin.
Although these totals may seem small in comparison to the overall municipal budgets, they are dollars that can help fill potholes and pay city and county bills.
Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price said city and county finance offices are aware of the money but said some of it cannot be claimed.
"I'm sure there's some on there that we will be able to claim," she said. "There's always some small ones and hopefully some of the bigger ones we can claim."
Tim Wyatt, a spokesman for Collin County, said its auditor's office checks the Texas Comptroller database quarterly and files claims. Wyatt said the process takes about six to eight months on average for each claim.
Sana Syed, a spokeswoman for the city of Dallas, said the state sent the city a check in May for $39,276.61. Then, on Oct. 20, the city received a list of potential unclaimed property from the state.
Local
The latest news from around North Texas.
The city controller's office then prepared and submitted a request on Nov. 11 to the state comptroller's office for $50,269.24.
More: Texas Unclaimed Property Search
DV.load("https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2642000-Unclaimed-Money-Dallas-County-Cities-and-County.js", { width: 650, height: 800, sidebar: false, container: "#DV-viewer-2642000-Unclaimed-Money-Dallas-County-Cities-and-County" }); Unclaimed-Money-Dallas-County-Cities-and-County (PDF)Unclaimed-Money-Dallas-County-Cities-and-County (Text)
