Online access to all of its property tax data could help make the county more attractive to business and industry according to Union County Assessor Susan Hanvey.
In a report to Union County Council earlier this week, Hanvey announced that, as of Tuesday, all the county’s property tax data in now accessible online through the Union County Assessor website.
“It has all our property tax records which includes general information, ownership, assessed values, previous ownership, acreage, house square footage, etc.” Hanvey said. “It can be accessed through Union County’s website which is countyofunion.org.”
Hanvey said that with their property tax data online, property owners can now access it from their homes or businesses without coming to her office as they had to in the past. She said the site has a number of features that makes it easier to look up the information and even point out any problems with what’s online.
“Where you used to have to come in and look at our property cards you now have the same information online,” Hanvey said. “You have the option of looking it up by ownership name, property address, and tax map number. It will bring that record up that you’re sending for. There’s a function called ‘Map It,’ you click on that and it takes you to the actual aerial photography and property lines. You can print it out.
“There’s a feedback section where if you find any errors, anything that doesn’t function properly that’s the way to notify us,” she said. “That way we can get it to the right person to straighten it out.”
She said having property tax data online could also make the county more attractive to new business and industry.
“One of my biggest hopes for this is on the economic side, for Union County to benefit economically,” Hanvey said. “Companies interested in coming to Union County can now do their research without coming in to the office. It’s been told to me if you don’t have these online services companies just pass you over.”
Hanvey said that Union County is one of the last counties in South Carolina to get its property tax data online. She said that even with constant inquiries by the state, it was more than a decade before the county was able to move forward with the process.
“We are not the very last county in South Carolina to have an online service, but we are one of the last few,” Hanvey said. “We’ve been asked for at least the last 10 years when this would take place, when we would get our property tax information online. It wasn’t until 2011 that the county was able to come with the funds.”
Even though it wasn’t until 2011 that the county was able to allocate the necessary funds to begin putting the information online, Hanvey said the process actually began in 2010.
“We actually started the process by looking at different vendors in 2010,” Hanvey said. “It was multidisciplinary project involving the assessor’s office, our IT department, and our GIS department. We all worked together to determine what company best suited our needs. Then we presented all our information from these companies to Supervisor Sinclair and then it was basically a group meeting to determine which company we’d go with.”
The company selected was “Q Public” which Hanvey said does business in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Hanvey said the company then began “integrating our software we use for tax data with their software. They basically rewrote their program to suit what we asked for.”
Hanvey said Q Public began this process in March and had it completed including rewrites, double-checking, and troubleshooting and the service online and accessible as of Tuesday.
By Charles Warner, staff reporter with The Union Daily Times
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