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Assessor asks Hamilton County for $547,917 data system to speed reviews and handle appeals
Summary
Assessor Marty Haynes requested a $547,917 capital investment and a $41,195 operating increase, saying a data-retrieval platform would reduce manual appraisal work and help the office process growing numbers of personal‑property reports and appeals.
Assessor Marty Haynes asked the Hamilton County budget committee for a $547,917 capital investment and a $41,195 increase to his office’s operating budget to handle rising workload and modernize appraisal reviews.
Haynes said the capital request includes a roughly $250,000 installation and would create a countywide data‑retrieval platform that could speed case reviews, reduce manual steps and improve the fairness and accuracy of property valuations. “We’re asking for a half a million $547,917 for data retrieval software,” he said.
The assessor framed the operating increase as covering audits of personal property reports, rising print costs and legacy pension and insurance expenses. He told commissioners about a roughly $20,000 line item for audits of business personal‑property reports: “We have somewhere in the neighborhood of 18,500 business reports that have to be filed each year,” Haynes said, and the state requires a certain number be audited.
Haynes outlined workload growth since he took office: parcels rose from under 150,000 to about 168,000 and personal‑property reports increased from about 12,000 to more than 18,000. Last year’s reappraisal produced over 7,700 informal reviews and more than 1,500 county and state appeals, he said, arguing that commercial appeals increasingly involve attorneys and expert appraisers and therefore more staff time and discovery work.
Commissioners sought clarity on the percentage change in the assessor’s budget and how much of the increase was capital versus operating. Haynes said the operating increase is modest (about 1.4%) and that the larger headline percentage reflects the one‑time capital outlay.
Haynes emphasized the system’s potential countywide uses, suggesting offices such as sheriff or EMS could use the platform if needed. He closed by inviting commissioners to follow up and offered to make staff available for demonstrations.
The committee did not take formal action during the presentation; the request will be considered as part of the broader budget process.
