County tax staff reported a year-over-year shortfall in current collections of roughly $2 million and told commissioners the gap stems from the timing of tax-bill mailings and software-provider problems.

"We are running slightly behind where we were last year. And, unfortunately, it is due to the timing of when our tax bills went out this year. We ran into a number of issues outside of our control that we had to work through with our software provider," Allison (tax collections staff) told the board. "We do expect to catch back up to our collections around the November, December time frame."

Commissioners asked whether specific districts or accounts had unusual patterns. A commissioner noted that the countywide totals were down while the New Hanover County Fire District collections were up by about $600,000; a county official attributed that increase to property revaluation combined with an unchanged fire district tax rate.

Staff said they will return regular reports and that the collection timing irregularity was the primary explanation for the year-over-year difference rather than a sudden change in payment behavior. No formal fiscal actions were proposed at the meeting; commissioners said they would review the November and December reports when available.