For the First Time in 37 Years, Jefferson County Makes Major Change to Tax Maps

By Barnett Wright | The Birmingham Times For the first time in 37 years, the Jefferson County Tax Assessor’s Office has completed a comprehensive countywide resurvey that has modernized parcel data that will impact more than 600,000 residents and departments like the Board of Equalization. The tax map is the foundation for some of the county’s most important functions from emergency services to the US Postal Service and every municipality within the county. Officials said the antiquated tax application relied on obsolete technology which caused potential security issues and led to inaccuracies that caused confusion and raised questions about the reliability of the data. Gaynell Hendricks, Jefferson County Tax Assessor, in the downtown courthouse. (Barnett Wright Photo, The Birmingham Times) The conversion took about four years and involved more than 400,000 parcels, said Gaynell Hendricks, Jefferson County Tax Assessor. “[The technology] was really bad. It was old. … [But] now we now know where every parcel is located and the boundaries in the entire county.” As Hendricks learned more about the antiquated GIS system in 2019 and found corrupted data in the Bessemer division could spread and put major systems at risk for the entire county she took action, she...