1. Tax system assessment-Eide Bailly

Allow Overlapping of Functions Related to Property Changes As mentioned in observation five, the process to record a deed can be tedious - to record a property change could require five separate stops between three different offices. To simplifY this process, I would recommend an overlap of functions between the Recorders, Auditors and Treasurers office. Each group should be able to verifY the tax status, collect tax payment and certify the taxes are paid, and record the change. Through proper training and support, this function should easily be handled by either entity. Request More Detail Statements from Financial Institutions The process banks follow to record payment information and electronic transfer of funds should include the detailed payment to parcel information. However, the monthly statements don't reflect this detail. As a result, during the busiest times of the year, County employees are spending unnecessary time reconciling bank statements. Cass County is model customer for any bank in the region. The County keeps hundreds of millions of dollars flowing through the banks and in many cases, has millions of dollars in the account at any time. I would recommend contacting these banks and requesting they include the detailed payment and parcel information in the monthly statement. The information is being hand-written and should easily be recorded with the transaction and included in the monthly statement. This would greatly reduce the time spent reconciling bank statements each month. Conclusion Cass County has done a good job making the current systems work together and making a bare amount of information available over the internet. However, the expectations of their "customers" are shifting - the amount of information needed is greater and the timeliness of that information is much more important. The chal1enges the County faces internally with managing the tax, parcel and special assessment data points and processes isn't going to get easier with the current technology, yet the expectations from their 'customers' is rising. This is a customer service issue and the gap is growing. In a perfect world, the systems the County is using internally would be able to provide the expanded data points their customers are looking for over the internet, but this isn't the case today. The current systems are "band-aided" as much as they can be and the need to provide more information over the internet would have to be supported by better systems within the County. Those systems the County employees use on a day-to-day basis should be upgraded with the intention of pushing more information to the web to close the gap in customer expectations we have today. Cass County Tax Automation Assessment & Recommendation Page 13 05/05/2006 Proprietary and Confidential' Contrnts of this doCHment can not be reproduced without WTitten permission from Bide BaillY, UY and Cass Counry ND