Challenge

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Property Appraiser Eddie Creamer needed a more efficient, sustainable way to ensure fair distribution of the St. Johns County's revenue burden from over 148,000 residential parcels and 70,000 homestead exempt parcels. Creamer knew there was a significant amount of taxable value missing from their annual tax roll based on Florida’s statutory homestead eligibility requirements. 

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Approach

TrueRoll partnered with Creamer to proactively monitor all parcels receiving homestead exemptions, which enabled him to perform a historical audit on the entire jurisdiction. TrueRoll tuned its algorithms to spot unqualified exemptions by leveraging their access to national datasets and matching algorithms that determine the eligibility of the county’s properties for exemption. These datasets included national deed registrations, rental observations, data from short-term rental addresses, national voter registration, and thousands of other reference datasets aimed at determining eligibility in real time.

In addition, TrueRoll’s Citizen Engagement module allowed St. Johns to quickly mail 2,500+ questionnaire affidavits, using templates customized for the reason(s) the exemptions were flagged for review (rental listings, additional homesteads, etc.). Homeowners could respond via mail or electronically, and St. Johns used TrueRoll’s case management system to make a final decision on each candidate, track the history of each parcel, and generate reports on the results.

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