The Jackson County Board of Directors approved on June 9 a request from the Revenue Commission to hire a temporary employee to support mapping for appraisal officers.

Board members discussed whether to hire the temporary mapping assistant at the meeting; a motion to approve the hire was made, seconded and carried by voice vote.

Separately, the Revenue Commission presented a staff recommendation about the county’s map-and-appraisal software. County staff said the system has run on an in-house server since 2019 and that the server is approaching end-of-life. Staff described two basic options: upgrade the in-house server for several thousand dollars or move the service to a vendor-hosted cloud platform. The packet included a vendor proposal to host the service; staff said a cloud-hosting arrangement would be “a little bit more a month” than current costs and that a new contract would be required because the vendor would host county data rather than the county hosting it.

Board members did not approve a cloud-hosting contract at the meeting. A board member recommended holding the hosting decision until the next meeting; staff agreed to return with the contract terms and further cost details for board consideration.

The hiring of the temporary mapping staff is intended to support appraisal officers while the county evaluates longer-term hosting and server options.