Council hears plan to clean up long-running property-assessment database; vendor work to be timed with next year’s reassessments

City staff told the Manassas City Council that updates to the city’s parcel and neighborhood database are necessary and that doing the work in-house would stretch the small assessor team during the regular reassessment cycle.

The city has used the current system for “22, 23 years,” staff said. Under a proposed arrangement the city would proceed under the vendor’s license agreement to pay an ongoing update fee and to have the vendor clean and standardize hundreds of problematic entries, including mis‑classified “neighborhoods” and other legacy errors.

Why it matters: Council members and staff said the dataset contains accumulated errors that complicate assessments and public records. Staff argued that doing the cleanup at the same time as the next reassessment would avoid disrupting the assessor office’s workflow.

Details of the proposal: Staff said the vendor’s annual license is “about $20 a year” as part of a broader contract, and that the vendor (identified in the discussion as Vision) would perform bulk data cleanup and assist with assessment work. City staff told council the vendor expects to complete its work “this time next year” and then deliver corrected data to city assessors in January–February for integration with the scheduled assessments.

Council discussion and next steps: Council members asked how long cleanup would take if done internally and whether one staffer could handle the job; staff repeatedly said the workload is too large for existing positions and that outside help is needed to do the cleanup and keep assessment work on schedule. Council signaled support for bringing the allocation back for formal consideration on a future agenda so the effort can be scheduled to coincide with the city’s reassessment cycle.

The meeting record does not show a final vote; staff will return with the formal proposal and timing details for Council consideration.