close

Data collection complete

4 min read
article image -

The Washington County tax assessment office announced this week Tyler Technologies Inc. completed its task of collecting information about every home, farm, commercial building and vacant lot in the county.

There are about 121,000 separate pieces of property in the county, 3,000 more than in 2013 when the county commissioners signed a contract with Tyler to, in the wake of a five-year court battle, conduct the county’s first reassessment in more than 30 years.

That doesn’t mean if someone begins construction of a building that they’re getting off scot-free.

“When a municipality issues a building permit, it must give a copy to county tax assessment” each month, said Robert Neil, Washington County’s project manager for the reassessment.

“It’s a concerted effort by Tyler and the county. The county will pick those properties up and turn them over to Tyler in the form of a report. It’s an ongoing process. If Tyler was done with data collection in a municipality and there were improvements, Tyler will go back out,” Neil said. “For the most part, we have good reporting from the municipalities. It translates into revenue for the municipality and the school district.”

Bradley Boni, Washington County chief assessor, said he sees the end of the data-collection phase as an important milestone in the mass appraisal that began in September 2013 in Washington’s Fifth Ward.

“Of the assessment process, data collection is the most pivotal part of the process that we do,” Boni said. “If you have bad data, you’re going to have bad data results. That’s the reason why the county opted to have all those improved properties visited. Tyler had to hire and train field personnel. I’m happy they did as much diligent work that they did, because that phase is really important.

“That’s the culmination of a lot of work, and I think it was done well.”

Final quality-control checks in the county – in Peters Township – are to be completed Friday, but residents in various places may see Tyler employees out and about.

“Something may come up,” Neil said. “Periodically, there may be a check. They’re just trying to get the data right.”

Tyler Technologies sends to property owners what’s known as a “data mailer” so that people can review detailed information about their homes to make sure it is correct.

Many of these have been sent out already as Tyler completes data collection in a municipality. The company aims tentatively to have all of these mailers sent by Oct. 1.

Tyler employees will continue to analyze this data, apply sales information and crunch numbers to generate new property assessments.

The county is going to tax at 100 percent of market value as of July 1, 2015, a marked change because the formula in place for more than 30 years has been to tax at 25 percent of the base-year value of Jan. 1, 1981.

Because every property owner wants to know more about this and, inevitably, how it will affect county, municipal and school district taxes, Neil has been contacting school districts about using their facilities for a series of informational meetings in November, December and January to explain what the county is calling “the impact notice,” Neil said. “The assessment is going to change or go up. There are going to have to be adjustments made on tax bills.”

Neil said just because a property’s assessment triples “doesn’t mean your taxes are going to go up by the same amount.”

What Tyler is calling “informal reviews” of property data, to differentiate from formal appeals filed with the county’s assessment appeals board, are likely to begin in February in the Chapman Building, 351 W. Beau St., Washington.

The Washington and McGuffey school districts went to court in 2008 to seek a countywide property reassessment. The commissioners filed several appeals but ran out of legal options five years later.

CUSTOMER LOGIN

If you have an account and are registered for online access, sign in with your email address and password below.

NEW CUSTOMERS/UNREGISTERED ACCOUNTS

Never been a subscriber and want to subscribe, click the Subscribe button below.

Starting at $3.75/week.

Subscribe Today