Commissioners demand answers after missing assessor data leaves tax-freezes unclear

Commissioner Rogers told the Sumner County Commission on Jan. 13 that a change in the assessor’s data system left prior parcel records inaccessible and may have caused tax-freeze errors affecting multiple property owners.

The issue emerged when Rogers said his elderly father’s 2019 tax freeze appeared to have been applied to a merged 9.03-acre parcel; county staff later told Rogers that state law limits a tax freeze to the dwelling plus five acres and that a system conversion from the Patriot product removed older data. “There was a merge in the 2 parcels. 2101 was merged, with another parcel that was there, the other 4.03 acres that made the total acreage 9.03,” Rogers said during public comment.

The commission heard from multiple officials that copies of older parcel records from the Patriot system were not migrated into the county’s current files and that retrieving the history may require paying the vendor. At one point a staff speaker said Patriot had offered data access for what was described in discussion as “50 or $60,000” per year for view-only access; the exact fee was not confirmed in the meeting record. County staff and commissioners repeatedly said they do not know how many other parcels might be affected until that legacy data is reviewed.

County officials described two separate but related problems: (1) the technical migration of parcel and appraisal records from the Patriot system into the county/state system, and (2) properly applying state tax-freeze rules when parcels were merged or reappraised. Daryl (County staff) explained that the tax-freeze calculation is performed outside the CAMA system and that an isolated land-merge case led to a freeze being continued on a parcel that should have lost part of the freeze once acreage exceeded the five-acre limit.

Commission discussion focused on next steps. Commissioners directed the law director and the property assessor’s office to locate the Patriot contract, determine whether Patriot still holds the historic data, and report back. The commission also asked staff to ask Patriot whether the data still exists, what the retrieval cost would be, and whether any contractual purge timeline applies. Chairman Hyde closed the item by keeping it under old business and asking the law director and assessor to return with options.

The commission did not adopt any reimbursement or retroactive refund policy at the meeting. A county administrative hearing related to the Rogers parcel was noted as set for Feb. 20; Rogers said he planned to pursue that appeal while the commission pursues the vendor contract and data access question.