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Bedford County to run AI over existing aerial imagery to find unlisted buildings; assessor says it is not a reassessment
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Summary
County staff proposed a low-cost method using 2022 ortho imagery and a GIS consultantto detect buildings missing from tax records; the tax director said the update is an identification effort, not a countywide reassessment, and the office reported a $1.6 million increase to the tax base for the prior month.
Bedford County commissioners on April 14 heard a presentation on a proposed mapping approach that combines existing 2022 orthophotography with older county flyover data and an AI run by the county's GIS consultant to identify properties that may be missing from assessment records. County staff described the approach as a lower-cost alternative to a full aerial flyover or a satellite-imagery purchase.
"What we are doing is a free data imagery through Pima...and then we're overlaying those maps and running an AI tool to identify properties that maybe the tax office could potentially not be captured," a county staff presenter said during the meeting. The consultant-run AI and project-management cost to the county was described as about $3,600, which staff said would come from the consultant budget already in place.
Nicole Abbott, identified in the record as the director of tax assessment, told commissioners the process would result in field visits and changes of assessment under the county's ordinary procedures, not a countywide reassessment. "This is not a reassessment," Abbott said. "It is just an easier way to update and strengthen the tax base." She described the field process: assessors will visit parcels uniformly, changes will be entered in the system and property owners will receive monthly change-of-assessment notices with a 40-day window to appeal.
Abbott also reported operational results: for the period described to the board (March 1 through April 1), the office had increased the tax base by about $1,600,000 through its current work. Commissioners asked how often imagery is updated; staff said the Kyma dataset used in the presentation is from 2022 and that updates typically arrive every three to five years, making the overlay-and-AI approach a recurring, lower-cost alternative to a one-time flyover, which the presenter estimated could cost about $253,000.
Commissioners approved a motion recognizing the change-of-assessment notices for March 2026 and thanked staff for the effort. Several commissioners emphasized that any update must be applied uniformly to every parcel to avoid illegal "spot-assessing." Abbott repeated that the county will follow established appeal procedures.
Why it matters: county officials said the approach would let assessors find and correct missing property information more affordably and sooner than a full flyover, potentially directing more revenue into the county tax base. The board did not authorize a reassessment; it moved to accept change-of-assessment notices and to proceed under existing legal and appeal frameworks.
What happens next: staff will continue the AI runs with the GIS consultant, follow up with field assessments where the system flags missing structures, and send change-of-assessment notices to affected owners under the usual schedule.
