Allen County Treasurer Sue Orth wants to give taxpayers and local finance companies an easy and free way to keep track of their property tax payments.

On Thursday, Orth will present a plan to the County Council to build a database of tax bill information and payment histories that her office would operate and control. She plans to seek funding – likely no more than $20,000 – for the venture in June, she said.

The new database would replace a similar database managed by a credit card vendor. The vendor, Certified IT, limits how many times a person or business can access the information in a year. Subscriptions are available for banks and mortgage companies who use the information daily.

Operating the database in-house would ensure that the information is both accurate and up-to-date, plus reduce phone calls to her office, Orth said.

Her plan also makes good on a campaign promise to provide more tax information electronically. Orth was elected to her first term as treasurer in November.

"I want to give the public everything that we can see on our system each day that is public record, with as many lookups as they want," Orth said.

Currently, her office sends the vendor periodic files to update the database. But this winter no updates were made for two months while the county waited for assessed values to be approved by the state, Orth said.

The new database would pull information daily from the tax software the treasurer’s staff uses. If residents make a payment online or have money automatically pulled from their checking account, they can see the amount posted to their account right away, Orth said.

Residents will be able to print reports and see how much they owed in property taxes last year – information property owners with mortgages need for their federal tax returns, Orth said.

Providing that information should cut down on the number of calls her small staff handles during tax season. And it should also reduce the need for mortgage companies, title companies and banks to call the office looking for similar information, she said.

"We don’t have the personnel to answer all these phone calls. This lookup system will help us handle all those calls," she said.

In March 2007, former Treasurer Bob Lee contracted with Certified IT to give property owners a way to pay their taxes online, and Certified IT handled the credit card payments. Certified IT also agreed to maintain the database, saving the county time and money.

But it took three hours for users to max out the 15-look-up limit per year set by the contract. And the number of phone calls to the office spiked. The vendor agreed to extend that to 30 look-ups and later lifted the restrictions when property tax bills were mailed that summer.

aiacone@jg.net