Thomson Reuters Aumentum Tax Advisory Meeting. Minutes Thursday, December 1, 2016

Transcription

1 Thomson Reuters Aumentum Tax Advisory Meeting Minutes Thursday, December 1, 2016 Attendee County or Organization In Person/Phone Tiffany Ahearn Blue Earth County In Person Lisa Malinski Blue Earth County Phone Michael Stalberger Blue Earth County In Person Angie Johnson Carver County Phone Dennis Freed Chisago County Phone Mike Nelson Chisago County In Person Lyn Regenauer Chisago County In Person Nancy Gunderson Clay County Phone Stuart Lien Clearwater County Phone Lisa Meredith MnCCC In Person Adam Hupach MN DOR In Person Bill Sparks MN DOR In Person Joe Heying Morrison County In Person Julie Shelstad Morrison County In Person Shayla Strack Morrison County In Person Amanda Lee Mower County Phone Eric Miller Mower County Phone Michele Wills Nicollet County Phone Michelle Snyder Polk County Phone Jill Gontarek Ramsey County In Person Chris Samuel Ramsey County In Person Dick Sivanich Ramsey County In Person Jody Wagner Rice County In Person Dana Anderson Scott County In Person Jackie Goerish Scott County In Person Kris Lage Scott County In Person Ellen Paulsen Scott County In Person Vikki Dullinger Stearns County In Person Steve Holthaus Stearns County In Person Sharon Robinson Stearns County In Person Celina Doogah Thomson Reuters Phone Tim Lacy Thomson Reuters Phone Kurt Peterson Thomson Reuters Phone Jon Ritchey Thomson Reuters Phone Joyce Larson Washington County In Person Jody Moran Washington County In Person

2 Call to Order: Chairperson Jody Moran called the meeting to order at 9:31 a.m. Introductions/Roll Call: In-person attendees introduced themselves, followed by phone attendees as reflected above. Approve Agenda: Mike Stalberger, Blue Earth County, made a motion to approve the agenda, seconded by Sharon Robinson, Stearns County. Motion carried. Approval of the November 3, 2016 Minutes: Tiffany Ahearn, Blue Earth County, made a motion to approve the minutes for November 3, 2016, seconded by Joe Heying, Morrison County. Motion carried. Approval of the November 18, 2016 Minutes: Sharon Robinson, Stearns County, made a motion to approve the minutes for November 3, 2016, seconded by Mike Stalberger, Blue Earth County. Motion carried. Financial Report: Tiffany Ahearn, Blue Earth County, made a motion to approve the financial report, seconded by Mike Stalberger, Morrison County. Outstanding Action Items 1. Steve Holthaus, Stearns County, will take the validation scripts and turn them into a report to run prior to PRISM being run. a. Steve believes this is almost done. 2. Lisa Meredith, MnCCC, will research scalable conference phone and satellite options. a. Working with MCIT for phone options. 3. Mike Nelson, Chisago County, will create instructions for exporting the PRISM XML file from Altova XMLSpy to Access in Word format. a. A video format did not work recommended to document in Microsoft Word. 4. Lisa Meredith, MnCCC, will follow-up with counties who have not yet ratified the Thomson Reuters contract, or sent MnCCC the copy (Becker, Carver, Clay, Mower, Nicollet, Washington). a. Still waiting on some counties. 5. Jon Ritchey, Thomson Reuters, will touch base with Gary Paldan, Thomson Reuters, to see if different county databases can be interchanged on the hosted test site databases. a. Still awaiting Gary s response. 6. Users that have suggestions for the Board should send their feedback to Jill Gontarek, Ramsey County. 7. Jon Ritchey, Thomson Reuters, will provide an update on the California implementation at the next TAC meeting. 8. Sharon Robinson, Stearns County, will provide instructions for retaining the schema in Altova XMLSpy. 9. Lisa Meredith, MnCCC, will reach out to Tim Lacy, Thomson Reuters, to discuss conference information and the SLA. Completed Action Items Action items from last month s meeting were discussed: 1. Jody Moran, Washington County, will follow up with the Testing team to ensure the hosted test sites are needed for next year. 2. Jill Gontarek, Ramsey County, will send the exempt survey results out via RSVP. 3. Tim Lacy, Thomson Reuters, will send Lisa Meredith, MnCCC, his contact information to send via RSVP. DOR Update: Bill Sparks & Adam Hupach Bill Sparks General Updates There is a new supervisor in the Auditor/Treasurer area, Darius. He is currently learning property tax. Previously he worked for Dorsey Whitney and for the federal trade commission. A new supervisor, Annabelle, will replace Deb Volkert in the Operations department, who is retiring December 3. Page 2 of 5

3 Lloyd McCormick, Compliance Officer, is also retiring December 3. His job is currently being reviewed to attract better candidates. Green acre values are close to being finalized. Preliminary transfer sales ratios are out. The DOR is trying to get an address on file for all cities and townships that receive aid. The Property Tax Levy report is due December 30. Those who miss the deadline will receive a 5% reduction in aid if not filed by January 30, An was sent out for unclaimed properties. Roughly 925 letters were sent. The explained the process to direct people with questions to the DOR. Counties can request a list of those letter recipients by ing the DOR. V5.8 of ecrv will roll-out December 2. Adam Hupach PRISM Ten counties have submitted something from Thomson Reuters. The DOR is currently working through those submission files right now. Jon Ritchey, Thomson Reuters, stated they are currently working on PRISM 3 and tried submitting a file, but were getting an error related to years. Adam Hupach, DOR, will follow up with Jon on the error. Thomson Reuters Update Tim Lacy, Thomson Reuters, introduced himself as Andrew s replacement. Tim has been with Thomson Reuters for 11 years, and is based out of Indianapolis. Jon Ritchey, Thomson Reuters, stated there are a few items left for PRISM 2 that need to be tested. Once everything is tested, the production hotfix will be sent out to all counties. There are a couple of counties that still have unique issues that are being worked on. Thomson Reuters was able to successfully submit a PRISM 1 file for Washington County. Based on the back from the DOR, everything is correct at this point. They cannot be certified yet as there may be schema changes in the future. PRISM 3 also had an acceptable file but Thomson Reuters did receive feedback from the DOR about some tree changes in the XML. The PRISM 2 hotfix will be released soon, but production release will be contingent upon the testing committee s approval. Jon went on to discuss the three training sessions he will be hosting via webinar in December: role security and user maintenance, legal party maintenance, and sales force/webex. Lisa Meredith, MnCCC, asked if Thomson Reuters will have a booth at the AMC conference next week. Tim Lacy, Thomson Reuters, stated he will not be attending and it wasn t a conference that Andrew mentioned. Tim will be attending a Minnesota conference in February. PRISM Ag Entities Jody Moran, Washington County, stated there is a balancing issue with ag entities. Jody sent out an RSVP to counties asking for feedback on who has ag entities, and who is over the tier. Thomson Reuters is having an issue being able to report the amount over the tier as non-homestead. In PRISM, there is a property type for farming and non-homestead. Chris Samuel, Ramsey County, indicated that part of the problem is that Aumentum uses state codes based on use, not a specific tier. Per the DOR, only report it as a farming entity if it s a farming entity at the reduced homestead tier, or report as non-homestead if it s not. Per Adam Hupach, DOR, this issue should be held until all other issues are resolved. The DOR is still internally discussing on how to handle this. Other PRISM Discussion Adam Hupach, DOR, indicated that if any counties have questions after reviewing their comparisons, they can the PRISM address and copy Thomson Reuters. If counties know it s a DOR question, it would help to indicate that in the . Page 3 of 5

4 Chris Samuel, Ramsey County, noted there are issues with Job Z PRISM is reporting it correctly, the abstract is not. The DOR wants to know about these issues so they can make a decision if it s worth fixing the abstract since they will be going away. Jody Moran, Washington County, asked if there is a tolerance threshold to be off between the abstract and PRISM. DOR indicated no, it goes by percentage and amount. If the county thinks it s a rounding issue, they need to propose that to the DOR for their feedback. Chris Samuel, Ramsey County, asked about new taxing authorities. PRISM recognizes the new taxing authority exists, but what is the best process to get those updates to the state so those codes exist and don t fail during validation? DOR will try and get the code table updated more frequently. Thomson Reuters has to add them internally to map them as needed, so an would suffice letting them know new codes exist. Chris is wondering if we can take the DOR s file of codes and import them into Aumentum. He is requesting that DOR establish scheduled times when they will update the codes file so counties can let their vendors know. Angie Johnson, Carver County, stated her fall mini is way off but the abstract is pretty clean. She is noticing some this old house issues where they are off by a significant amount. Jon Ritchey, Thomson Reuters, suggested ing him the details to get a case started. Julie Shelstad, Morrison County, indicated they are off by millions on their fall mini and requested an update from Kurt Peterson, Thomson Reuters. Amanda Lee, Mower County, stated she submitted a case back in November about their PRISM issues and has not heard anything back. Jon Ritchey, Thomson Reuters, indicated he replied back in November but noticed his bounced back. He will resend the . Adam Hupach, DOR, stated a comparison and summary report is generated after a PRISM submission. Next year, there will be no comparison report. The DOR sent out a survey to counties asking what they do with the abstract report, how often it is run, and at what time of year. Lisa Meredith, MnCCC, asked if the DOR could provide their logic so we can replicate the comparison on our side for counties to run ad-hoc. Mike Stalberger, Blue Earth County, indicated that part of the PRISM partnership with the DOR was to be able to pull information out of PRISM for any county, at any time. He asked the DOR to be held to that standard instead of recreating the wheel. Committee Reports Legislative Committee Dennis Freed, Chisago County, stated there will be a tax statement change order with all changes being on the back. He is looking for committee feedback by tomorrow (December 2). Training Committee Dana Anderson, Scott County, stated the upcoming training dates may have changed since the first RSVP was sent out. The new schedule is as follows: 1. December 6 roles, security and permissions 2. December 14 legal party administration 3. December 20 sales force and webex training All webinars will be recorded and conducted by Jon Ritchey. Enhancement Committee Lisa Malinski, Blue Earth County, have not met, no updates. Testing, Documentation and Standards Committee Chris Samuel, Ramsey County, reiterated that counties will need to be at the 1244 patch level for the upcoming PRISM hotfix. Lisa Meredith, MnCCC, asked about payouts for the testing committee members. She will get a proposal going for the testing committee. Chris Samuel also suggested reimbursement for the reporting committee. Page 4 of 5

5 ISSG Liaison Mike Nelson, Chisago County, indicated the ISSG group does not meet in December but will be holding their annual workshop in January. Reports Committee Mike Nelson, Chisago County, stated he has received a couple of report requests, one being for PRISM. Mike also sent out an RSVP asking for county feedback on what version of SQL server they are using; most counties are using 2008 R2. There are differences between 2008 R2 and 2012, which can lead to issues when running reports. He stated that version 2008 may be coming to end of life soon meaning, it may not be supported by Microsoft. He is requesting recommendations from Thomson Reuters on how they plan to move forward for hardware requirements since we are not set to upgrade at any time soon. MnCCC Board Liaison Jill Gontarek, Ramsey County, was not present at the last board meeting. Lisa Meredith, MnCCC, indicated she is busy working out details for the upcoming AMC conference next week where she will be promoting the annual MnCCC conference. Lisa stated the board room is being redone to be setup for webinars, skype calls, etc. It will allow for roughly 15 people. She is also actively working with MCIT on finding scalable telephone solutions. Jill Gontarek, Ramsey County, will be working on a survey to send out via RSVP for member feedback on how MnCCC can be improved. Lisa indicated the RFP for the member-only website is still out for bids. Contract Committee Michael Stalberger, Blue Earth County, did not have an update on the SLA but hopes to have it ready by the January meeting. Tim Lacy, Thomson Reuters, will be the contact for the SLA moving forward. Other Items of Concern Lisa Meredith, MnCCC, stated there is a new user group: Tax Court. There are two levels of membership: full blown, where you can enter and pull as much data as you are able, and limited, where you can enter and pull a limited amount of data. Dan Whitman is the interim chair if anyone wants more information. Lisa Meredith, MnCCC, stated that MnCCC is pursuing contract management software, and are currently sitting in on demos and evaluating different systems. Users can drop Lisa an if they are interested. Jill Gontarek, Ramsey County, indicated an exempt survey went out, with a handout available for the inperson attendees. Two new exempt class codes need to be added. They won t get reported on PRISM, but the legislative and testing committee may need to discuss so there is consistency. Chris Samuel, Ramsey County, asked the group how effective Altove XMLSpy has been for them. Mike Nelson, Chisago County, stated he has been asked to provide some training on the tool for how to convert XML to SQL or Access. Sharon Robinson, Stearns County, stated she was able to use the tool to find a way to retain the schema file when exporting to Excel, without having to redo the entire file each time. Sharon Robinson, Stearns County, mentioned she would like a state tool to take the PRISM data and proof it at the county level prior to submitting to the DOR. MnCCC indicated they could partner with a contractor to create something. Mike Stalberger, Blue Earth County, reminded the group that the DOR was supposed to provide this for us but has yet to follow through. Adjournment Mike Stalberger, Blue Earth County, made a motion to adjourn the meeting. Sharon Robinson, Stearns County, seconded the motion. Motion carried. The next meeting is scheduled for January 5, 2017, at MnCCC. Respectfully Submitted by Tiffany Ahearn, Blue Earth County Tiffany.Ahearn@blueearthcountymn.gov Page 5 of 5