The Marshall County Treasurer’s office is looking to save on time and on resources when it comes to tax bill preparation.
For the past 15 years or so, the Treasurer’s office has printed property tax bills in-house. Marshall County Treasurer Penny Lukenbill requested Monday morning that the preparation methods be changed to contract with an outside company.
Lukenbill says other departments have completed similar tasks, and believes it’s time for the Treasurer’s office to move away from what it is currently doing.
“It just does not seem like an efficient process and a good use of county resources,” says Lukenbill.
It takes the five employees in the Treasurer’s office about one week to complete the mailing. Providing those tax bills to county residents costs about $17-thousand each year.
Under the Treasurer’s proposal, Marshall County would contract with Manatron/Thomson-Reuters to download tax bill data and prepare the statements for mailing. The process would cost Marshall County a bit more money with estimates running in the $21-thousand range.
Marshall County printed more than 35-thousand tax bill statements last year. State requirements have required the Treasurer’s office to finalize the process a bit earlier than usual. That new deadline in the face of aging equipment and limited resources has brought about the changes.
Lukenbill says it has become a crunch.
“We’re the last ones in the process. After the Assessor assesses, the Auditor applies all of the deductions and exemptions and applies the tax rates and applies the taxes, we are last in line,” says Lukenbill. “Everything just has to go perfectly, so smoothly. There is no margin for error.”
The contract will include the company updating resident mailing addresses in a database.
According to a recent state survey, more than three-quarters of the responding counties said they outsourced their tax bill preparation. The Marshall County Commissioners gave their approval to move forward to the County Commissioners with the process.
