Linn County, Iowa, Leverages GIS to Provide Transparency to Taxpayers

The Linn County Treasurer’s Office turned to ArcGIS Hub to provide enhanced customer service and greater transparency of the property tax process.

Organized in 1839, Linn County is the second-largest county in Iowa. With Cedar Rapids serving as county seat, Linn County is home to approximately 230,000 residents and 106,726 tax parcels. The Linn County Treasurer’s Office is responsible for collecting property taxes and distributing the tax dollars to all taxing authorities within the county. This process involves multiple departments of the City of Cedar Rapids and Linn County, including the city and county assessor, county auditor, and county treasurer. 

It all starts with the geographic information system (GIS) Land Records map showing property ownership, which assessors use as a basis for determining values on all real property in their jurisdictions. Meanwhile, tax authorities are developing tax rates based on their budgets, which the county auditor and the state certify. Once certified, the rates are applied and taxes are calculated. Then, the county treasurer bills and collects the property taxes so that they can be distributed to the taxing authorities.

The property tax process is often not well understood by the taxpayer, leading to questions about how property taxes are calculated, what tax revenue is used for, and how individuals’ property taxes compare with others in their community. The public’s inquisitiveness can be amplified in times when property values fluctuate drastically, such as during and after an event like the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, requests for property information from title companies, mortgage companies, prospective buyers, and others can become a regular occurrence.

For the Linn County Treasurer’s Office, frequent inquiries by public stakeholders and taxpayers resulted in staff’s spending significant amounts of time looking up and providing information about specific properties. As Nicki Finger, deputy treasurer and a 25-year employee of the Linn County Treasurer’s Office, stated, “It wasn’t uncommon to receive a minimum of three phone calls for information each time a property transaction occurred.” Although the office recognized that a one-stop web experience would improve customer service and reduce staff’s workload, it wasn’t until the implementation of a new tax collection system that it started to emerge as a reality.
 

Although the new tax collection system did not include a web component, Linn County had already been leveraging GIS and had experienced GIS professionals. They worked with Finger to start building out her vision. 

Jason Siebrecht, longtime GIS manager for Linn County, was instrumental in communicating the GIS capabilities available in-house. That communication effort, paired with Finger’s deep knowledge of the property tax process and Matt Boyle, a Linn County GIS analyst supporting data exploration and prototype building, resulted in the Treasurer’s Office Data Transparency Portal.
 

The portal leverages ArcGIS Enterprise, which serves as the system of record for the county’s parcel data. This data forms the foundation of a hub site that staff created using ArcGIS Hub. This data is shared via ArcGIS Online, where the hub site is hosted. 

In the beginning, the hub site was only available to staff for internal use. As more and more functionality was developed and incorporated, the site was opened up to a few external customers for testing and feedback. Once the team was comfortable with the maturity of the site, it was released for public use. Additional comments and feedback were gathered, and minor adjustments were made.
 

The new hub site by Linn County has accomplished three things:

• Reduced the treasurer’s office staff’s workload by providing instant access to frequently requested information

• Provided greater transparency to taxpayers by clearly communicating the property tax process

• Enhanced customer service by providing instant access to information via the web outside regular business hours

The county employs 800 people, with 38 working in the treasurer’s office. Of those, six employees used to be dedicated to property tax, with four spending most of their time handling the public’s inquiries. Since the rollout of the hub site in the fall of 2022, there are now only two employees dedicated to property tax, thanks to the decrease in telephone and counter-traffic inquiries.

The rollout of the hub site has provided taxpayers with an immediate level of transparency, which was not available before, and includes:

• Current tax year statistics

• An explanation of the tax bill cycle

• Tax collection charting

• Property tax details—including an explanation of where property tax dollars go—for each property on an interactive map

• Property tax comparison with other properties 

• Tax levy rates

• A robust FAQ section

The site has also succeeded in providing enhanced customer service. Finger noted, “So many people work during the day and don’t have a chance to deal with personal things until the evening, which is outside of our office hours. Or for remote workers who work shifts outside of normal business hours—now they can use the website to still get the answers they need or get their work done.”