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Gardner assessors report billing glitches: 500 deeds affected, 164 small personal-property bills abated
Summary
At a Jan. 21 meeting, the City of Gardner Board of Assessors heard an update from the assessor describing billing errors from the Munis system that sent roughly 500 tax bills to previous owners and generated 164 small personal-property bills that were later abated; the assessor said Vision end-of-year processing and website updates are complete.
The City of Gardner Board of Assessors on Jan. 21 heard an update from the assessor about recent billing errors and year-end work, including reissuing about 500 bills that had been sent to prior owners and abating 164 small personal-property bills that Munis incorrectly generated.
The assessor (name not stated) told the board that a file extract from the assessor’s property system, Vision, is used to create bills in the Munis billing system. The assessor said a glitch caused bills for properties sold in 2024 to go to the previous owner: “there were about 500 of those.” The assessor added that staff worked with Munis to create new bills and send them to the corrected owners.
The assessor also described a separate Munis issue affecting a status field used to suppress bills. If the status field contained certain alphanumeric codes (for example, “d” for delete or “u” for under the exemption threshold), Munis did not interpret those codes correctly and still produced bills. The assessor said Munis generated 164 small personal-property bills that were under the $5,000 exemption threshold; the assessor said those 164 bills totaled “like, $5,000” and that staff abated them and mailed abatement certificates and explanatory letters to affected taxpayers.
The assessor told the board that the Vision end-of-year process is complete and staff are now working in the fiscal 2026 database. The assessor said property record cards and online pages were updated: “Everything that we used for getting to the tax rate… I also updated, when you go in through the website and you wanna look at your property record card, that's all been updated.”
The assessor said there are a small number of omitted or revised personal-property bills to prepare — “I think it was 5 or 6” — for newly opened businesses, and that those will be processed soon.
A motion to accept the assessor’s update was made and seconded; the chair called for the vote and said, “Aye… The ayes have it,” indicating the board approved the update.
The board did not provide additional financial detail beyond the totals reported by the assessor nor a formal list of affected taxpayers during the public portion of the meeting. The assessor said affected taxpayers were mailed abatement certificates and explanatory notes.
