Appraisal Services Tailored to Meet Your Needs
Industry: County Government
Location: Butler County, OH
Population: 370,000
Tyler Client Since: Over 50 years
Total Properties on 2012 Assessment Roll: 165,000
Residential Properties on 2012 Assessment Roll: 130,000
Tyler Products Used: Tyler Verify, iasWorld®
The Facts
For more than 50 years, Butler County’s reassessment team has worked with Tyler’s CLT Appraisal Services to perform field data gathering for all their residential and commercial properties. In recent years a strategic goal was established to strengthen efficiency and leverage the expertise and talent of the in-house reassessment staff. Tyler was called on to perform a new role of providing best-in-class reassessment tools, technologies and process guidance to facilitate in-house desktop assessment of the vast majority of Butler County parcels. Tyler Verify was the foundation of that solution.
Key Challenges
- Better leverage the talent and high skill level of the in-house assessment staff.
- Streamline the assessment process to reduce costs and improve in-house productivity.
- Restore accountability, transparency and trust to Butler County taxpayers.
Action Taken
In March of 2012, Butler County began working with Tyler’s CLT Appraisal Services to deploy a system that integrated Tyler Verify desktop review software, street-level images (captured by Tyler Verify staff), Pictometry® imagery, sketches, and Esri® ArcGIS tools to enable a time- and cost-saving desktop reassessment solution.
Benefits: Financial and Beyond
By September 2012 — just six months after starting — Butler County was up-and-running with the system, performing reassessments on 130,000 parcels in the very first year of the project. The results were highly successful, including:
- Review time per parcel dropped significantly, with the in-house staff achieving over 200 property reviews per day, resulting in a tremendous reduction in labor costs compared to conventional inspection methods.
- During the verification stage, field staff now only visit properties that require heightened analysis and remediation, resulting in effective and efficient use of County resources, including time and fuel, while reducing the County’s carbon footprint.
With the use of this technology, the majority of our reappraisal workflow is stored electronically, thus allowing for easy retrieval of record data for both quality control and progress reporting. Our experience with Tyler’s support is that their service is second to none, with each issue being given specialized attention.
Berkley Rose
Butler County Assessment Project Manager
Why Tyler?
- Tyler has 75 years experience in the appraisal and tax software and services industry.
- Tyler provides tremendous flexibility and guidance during implementation of all its software and services. It will work with database connectivity challenges, and other vendors, to assure a smooth-running integrated system.
- Tyler provides a large array of on-going support options.
The Challenge
In 2008, new leadership arrived in Butler County with a vision to restore accountability, transparency and trust to the taxpayers of the County. The vision included reduced spending, an enhanced and more informative website, and a smaller yet more highly trained staff.
Butler County has been partnering with Tyler for well over 50 years. Historically CLT Appraisal Services has performed 100% of the duties related to each six-year reappraisal and triennial update. However, for their 2012 reappraisal, the Butler County staff was challenged to perform most of those duties in-house, with the potential to increase savings to the County and its taxpayers. Additionally, the County’s appraisal division wanted to develop and leverage the expanded in-house skill set that would result from more training and experience in the reappraisal process.
In order for the County’s appraisal division to complete the reappraisal in a timely manner — while still being able to perform day-to-day office duties and adhere to budget constraints — they needed the right tools and technology for streamlining the project. They also needed to get the job done on time.
Partnering with Tyler Technologies to Create an Integrated Solution
Tyler Verify proved to be the solution Butler County needed to equip their staff for reviewing — or verifying — the parcels of their jurisdiction in a time-efficient manner, while adhering to statutory and International Association of Assessing Officers (IAAO) recommended requirements.
Butler County appraisers were each provided with three monitors for use with Tyler Verify, giving each reviewer the ability to view the latest street photo on one screen, the latest aerial photo on another, and pertinent CAMA data on a third. Having this instant visual access to all the data provided a one-step detailed display of each property for desktop review.
The software was able to be customized so the data elements displayed were modified to best meet the individual needs of the user and the task at hand. Appraisers were provided with mobile tablets to use Tyler Verify to incorporate both Mobile Office and Data Sheet Writer for performing field checks.
Desktop Review Makes a Big Difference
According to Berkley Rose, “Unlike previous methods of performing mass appraisal with hard-copy property records and a need for significant physical storage space, desktop assessment using Tyler Verify helps keep the vast majority of Butler County’s work electronic — thereby saving significant time and cost related to printing, paper, sorting and storage. Tyler Verify also serves as an instant visual demonstration for communicating to taxpayers how Butler County reviewed his/her respective property, without having to sort through archived paper records.”