Pike outsources county tax function

This summer, Pike County will be the first northeastern Pennsylvania count,,% to outsource a county tax assessment department and only the third in Pennsylvania to do so.

Commissioners in July approved a 41 month contract with 21st Century Appraisals to take over management of the county office

Former state senator and 21st Century Appraisals director of operations, Gene Porterfield said that his company has expertise in tax assessment matters.

The company has overseen tax reassessments for 27 Pennsylvania counties.

Porterfield will oversee the privatization of the Pike county tax assessment office, scheduled to go private in the first week of August.

After the 41-month period, Pike may have the option to have its tax assessment return to in-house management or continue to have it outsourced, according to Porterfield. Meanwhile, every one of the nine Pike tax assessment employees will become a 21st Century Appraisals employee, with identical salaries and equivalent benefits.

Porterfield and county officials have developed a cost comparison for outsourcing versus in-house management.

The contract is for $2.3 million. The county estimated the cost for running the department in-house during the contract period at $1.7 million.

However, one of cost-savings of outsourcing will occur when Pike is ready to do its next re-assessment (the last one was done in the early 1990s). At that time, the county will save up to 22 percent on re-assessment costs due to efficiencies that the outsourcing will put in place.

Porterfield said that a typical cost per parcel for a county doing a re-assessment is $55, but doing it through 21st Century's system can save the county $10 per parcel. That means that if a county has 60,000 parcels, it will save $600,000.

The 21st Century system includes developing all tax assessment information, real estate transactions, and related information in an online database that will be accessible to the county departments that deal with real estate transactions, delinquent taxes, and archiving of tax and real estate records.

Computerization, online access, and structuring data electronically, eliminates duplication of effort in administering tax and property information in various other county departments.

Eventually, the public will have access to the general records for a small fee, allowing citizens to access records that they would have had to go to the courthouse to see. Only property owners, however, will be able to tap into detailed records of their own files. These would. be accessible only through a password and security protected system.

When all factors for running the department are considered, the difference between Pike doing its tax administration inhouse or outsourcing, it could be closer to $2.3 million, according to Pike commissioners Harry Forbes and Rich Caridi.

Add to that the savings incurred in doing the next county re-assessment, and outsourcing becomes extremely cost-effective, say Porterfield and the commissioners.

The contract terms also give the county a higher level of professional training for tax assessment employees, who will be state certified.

Forbes and Caridi said that Pike is not going for an immediate re-assessment, although the commissioners are aware that property values have been rising as a result of the westward march of urban sprawl from northern New Jersey. Any time property value changes significantly, re-assessment is inevitable.