Catherine Murray

My name is Catherine Murray and I am the director of the property tax support group (PTSG) here at Property Valuation Services. I am so excited to be celebrating my 20th year here with PVS this coming December! I started out with PVS as an administrative assistant and over the years have assisted both the real estate and the business personal property divisions in various degrees. With the help of an assistant, I make certain all your parcels and accounts are in our system as well as ensuring we have all the correct assessing and jurisdiction information and deadlines. This includes making certain that everything is set up correctly in our invoicing system. I oversee the creation and sending of the property tax summary reports that are sent to our clients twice per year, as well as various other reports that are requested throughout the year.

The Property Tax Support Group consists of 11 members who collect values for both the business personal property and real estate parcels and accounts in our system. We have tracked over 43,000 parcels in our system over the past year and are currently in the middle of the busiest time of year for assessment notifications and appeals. Not every assessor will send an assessment notice on every account each year, so our goal is to contact the assessing offices to obtain the current proposed values in time for our consultants to review and file appeals on your behalf. We can do this because of the extensive database we have that helps us track parcel and appeal date information.

Later this summer, we will start seeing an increase in property tax statements being issued and the Property Tax Support Group team will switch gears from collecting values to collecting, reviewing and creating tax bill approvals. Our office has approved over 28,000 tax bills over the past year — the majority between the months of October and January. We rely heavily on the expertise of our real estate and business personal property consultants and managers to help us ensure that all the data on your property tax approvals is accurate and we have a multi-step review process with a goal of 100% accuracy.

The last couple of years have seen a change in the dynamics of the job we do. Dealing with short-staffed government offices, delays in mail and working remote have challenged us but the PTSG department and PVS have remained strong.

Working for PVS over the last (almost) 20 years has never been dull. I am constantly learning new ideas and concepts and look forward to the next 20 years!