Assessor warns of heavy workload during valuation-system conversion and asks for limited reclassifications

Benton Countys assessor updated the Budget Committee on a proposed 25-27 assessment budget (about $6.86 million current-service-level) and outlined a multi-part conversion to a new property valuation and tax system that county staff said will be implemented in two phases beginning July 2025.

Why it matters: The assessors office values property, maintains tax maps, processes exemptions and coordinates tax-rate/billing functions that fund most county taxing districts. An extended conversion while maintaining legacy systems affects staff workload and could raise short-term maintenance costs.

Key points - Conversion and dual-system costs: The assessor said the county is converting from two legacy systems into a new combined system (OrCats is the vendor referenced); work begins July 1, 2025 on the tax/accounting piece and valuation conversion starts January 1, 2026. The assessor said the biennium includes overlapping maintenance payments because older systems remain live during conversion; she estimated roughly $250,000 in legacy-system maintenance plus new-system costs during the transition. - Staffing and succession: The assessor highlighted vacancies and near-term retirements. She said a limited-duration program coordinator was hired internally during the last biennium and that reclassifications and a permanent program coordinator position would help manage conversion projects, data-audit work and omission identification (the assessor cited a recent discovery of an omitted parcel that generated roughly $250,000 of added value). The assessor requested several reclassifications; county staff recommended two of the six requested reclasses in reduced form. - Appraisal and field work: The department reported it values roughly 40,521 real and personal property accounts and that omitted-value discovery in a recent year added about $320,000 to taxes; the assessor said roughly 1,300 properties had not been inspected in 25+ years and that appraisal capacity is needed to address long-standing omissions.

Committee questions and staff notes Committee members asked whether assessment data uploads and scanned property jackets would be made publicly available; the assessor said both scanned jackets and tax-card records are intended to be published on the new property-search platform as part of the conversion. Staff noted the departments workload is substantial and that implementing the conversion while maintaining customer service will be the main near-term challenge.

Ending: The assessor urged the committee to consider the conversion workload and the need for cross-training/reclassification to preserve institutional knowledge; staff proposed limited freezes and recommended two reclassifications to help manage conversion and sustain appraisal capacity. No formal votes were recorded during the presentation.