Pekin Daily Times
By Tara Mattimoe
Published: Wednesday, November 28, 2007
PEKIN - In a few months, Tazewell County residents won't have to make a trip to the supervisor of assessments office to find out about their property taxes - they can visit the county's Web site instead.
The “E-Government” contract with Manatron will allow the public to look up tax assessment information that previously could be accessed only by visiting or calling the supervisor of assessments office, said Planning and Zoning Administrator and acting Supervisor of Assessments Kristal Deininger.
Manatron Inc., the company that has provided computer services to Tazewell County for several years and was contracted by the county to help improve efficiency in the supervisor of assessments office in December of last year, will supply the software and hardware for the new system for $7,500 upfront and a yearly operating cost of $9,600, Deininger said.
The new program will be accessible through Tazewell County's Web site and will offer residents everything they can find on their property record card in the office, including property tax identification numbers, the assessed value of their property, addresses and owner names.
“It will really eliminate a lot of phone traffic,” Deininger said. “Realtors, title companies, attorneys, buyers and sellers of homes ... they call all the time looking for numbers. Now they'll be able to just look it up.”
It's not that the assessment office doesn't like the public, Deininger said. It's just that without the constant interruptions, the people working there will be able to focus on other high priority projects in the office and get more done.
Improving efficiency in the assessments office, said Board Chairman Jim Unsicker, was one of two main reasons for introducing the new software. The other was to increase convenience for the tax payers.
Making tax assessment information available to the public will obviously benefit home owners, Unsicker said, and others as well: “Realtors and assessors love this idea,” he pointed out, “because they can just look it up instead of having to come into the office.”
Deininger said she is excited about the new software for the staff's sake, but even more so for the public.
“This is huge,” Deininger said. “We've had people asking us for this non-stop, wanting to be able to access this information over the computer. We'll be offering better service out there to individuals. It will be easier and quicker for them to get their questions answered.”
Along with the convenience, Unsicker said, there will, unfortunately, come the risk of security breaches.
“Confidentiality is definitely an issue,” Unsicker said. “It's imperative to have firewalls and other protection. We don't want people to be able to get in there and just wander around in the county's records. We also need to make sure people can't hack in and manipulate data.”
The county is looking to implement the new software next February or March, Deininger said, and plans to wait until the new supervisor of assessments starts in January before initiating it in earnest.
Gary Twist's appointment as supervisor of assessments will be up for approval at Wednesday's county board meeting.
The new tax assessment software is the latest in several technological improvements Tazewell County has made recently as part of what the county administrator coined in September as its “comprehensive technology improvement plan.”
In September, the board approved an upgrade to the county's computer software program, ZenWorks, which will allow their technology technician to perform most computer services remotely instead of needing to go to the computer physically.
That same month, they approved the renewal of a contract with Crime Cog Technologies Inc. for software and software maintenance of the county's integrated justice center system E-Justice, which is used extensively by the sheriff's office and the state's attorney's office.
There is more to come, said Unsicker, starting with the county's Web site. “There's a desperate need to update it,” he said, “and to get it more user friendly. That's a priority with me.”
What other technological advances does the county have planned? It's hard to say.
“Technology is an ongoing issue,” Unsicker said. “Changes can take place in such a short amount of time. We'll just have to keep on top of it.”