~on.ie~ ~e~ CJrrti~LF~
Assessor and Collector of Taxes
County of Kerr
Kerrville, Texas 78028
Phone 512 8961414
December 8, 1978
Honorable Commissioners Court
Kerr County
Kerriile, TX 78028
RE: Proposed On-Line Computer System
Office of the Tax Assessor-Collector
Gentlemen:
As you gentlemen are well aware, Kerr County is experiencing a
phenomenal rate of growth. The various departments of our office,
such as ad valorem taxes, automobile registration and voter regis-
tration, are expanding daily. Finding and keeping qualified em-
ployees is becoming more difficult. I sincerely believe that the
best answer to many of these problems is an on-line computer system.
Transfer of property in the county has accelerated to such a point
that it is almost impossible for our office to maintain up to date
ownership records. With the new system daily up-dates could be
made and new inventories printed out in our office. Changes could
made prior to 3 or 4 days before running the tax roll, eliminating
the period of a month or more between the time the roll goes to the
computer service and returns to our office. Collections could be
fed into the system daily enabling us to pay the county accounts
weekly as we do the state, if you so desire. At this time, our
reports now take 3 or 4 weeks to come back from the computer ser-
vice and if any county fund is in need of money, we must manually
add the tax paid in order to credit that account.
One of the greatest advantages of the system would be that our delin-
quent tax roll would be up to date allowing us to know exactly what
is delinquent in each tax fund.
Our computer service is experiencing great difficulty in finding
competent key punch operators. As a result, many of our changes
were not made on the 1978 tax roll. Because of this difficulty,
the computer service has advised us that in 2 or 3 years they will
be forced to eliminate accounts that are not on the terminal. They
have also advised us that as of the 1st of January there will be a
substantial increase in cost to counties not on the terminal.
All voter registration could be put on the computer. New voter
registration cards would print out in our office. However, West-
ern Data would continue to supply the bi-annual November mail out
as they have in the past.
Con' t
l ~
0 oz,im Lati Srrwt-~
Assessor and Collector of Taxes
County of Kerr
Kerrville, Texas 78028
Phone 512 896-1414
Page 2
Honorable Commissioners Court
December 8, 1978
For automobile registration, we would be able to obtain pertinent
information from the computer by name or license number. Our firm
is now working with Mr. Bob Townsley to obtain a tie-in with the
state computer. This would make it possible for us to get state
wide registration information rather than by telephone calls to
Austin for verification.
The recent Constitutional Amendment passed in November is going to
make drastic changes in the way we assess and collect taxes. I
believe that this amendment is only the beginning of many changes
in the future of ad valorem taxation. We will soon find it nece-
ssary to increase our staff or adopt some measure such as this
on-line computer system. I have recently accepted the resignation
of one employee in our ad valorem tax department. If we employ
this new service, I believe we can manage without replacing her.
Respectfully,
r~
(Nlrs.) DORIS LEE SMITH
Tax Assessor-Collector
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