Whiteville begins billing on first city property tax roll since 2015, officials say

City finance staff told the City Council that Whiteville has loaded its 2025 property tax valuation into the city's billing software, begun accepting payments and planned to mail tax bills within days, marking the first property tax billing the city has undertaken since 2015.

A staff speaker identified as Colvin said the city had taken parcel and personal-property data from the county and loaded a 2025 valuation into the city's software. "According to all assessments, the value of the City of Whiteville is $473,000,000," Colvin said. He added the city has approximately 3,980 accounts and reported a total levy, "including school mortgage dollars," of $2,900,000 as calculated in the system.

Colvin said staff had already taken a few in-person payments, enabled credit-card and website payments as of the meeting day, and expected phone payments to be enabled later in the week. He said the city planned to update its website and IVR phone system to include property-tax payment options and expected taxpayers to be able to pay at city hall beginning Monday; tax bills were expected to be mailed by the weekend or early next week.

Colvin said a remaining task was loading prior past-due balances into the system and that staff were addressing a vendor hiccup to complete that work, which he described as "the last nut to crack." He said staff hoped to import the past two years' balances by the end of the month but cautioned the process could be tedious.

Council members asked whether past-collections work would be handled in-house or contracted; the transcript records the question but does not include a final decision on contracting for collections.