Maricopa Assessor Fails to Document eNotices Savings | The Locally Times
The Assessor’s Office promotes its eNotices program as a cost-saver, but its public financial reports contain no cost-benefit analysis for the program.
The Maricopa County Assessor’s Office promotes an electronic notification program to property owners with the promise of saving taxpayer money, but the agency provides no public data to support this assertion. According to the Assessor’s official website, the eNotices service allows property owners to receive their annual Notice of Valuation electronically instead of through the mail. The office states that the program saves the county and its taxpayers money by reducing printing and postage costs. The service is described as optional, and property owners must actively register to participate. To enroll, a resident needs a unique authorization code found on their most recent physical Valuation Notice. Each property parcel has its own distinct code for registration, which is completed through an external website, enoticesonline.com. The Assessor’s Office provides a phone number and email address for property owners who have questions or cannot locate their code. ## Public Reports Lack Program Analysis The Assessor's Office maintains a “Reports Home” page on its website as a public repository for financial and valuation documents. This archive includes official records such as the February State Abstract, City Levy Limit Summaries, and Full Cash Value Analysis reports for the years 2023 through 2026. A review of these documents shows various property value analyses and summaries for school and fire districts. However, none of the listed reports provide a financial analysis of the eNotices program. The public records contain no specific figures, audits, or cost-benefit analyses that quantify money saved on printing and postage. ## Missing Metrics Prevent Verification Public records do not specify several key metrics required to assess the program's financial efficiency. For example, the records do not show the total number of property owners enrolled in the eNotices service or the percentage of total county parcels this enrollment represents. Without this adoption rate, the scale of any potential savings cannot be determined. Furthermore, the Assessor’s Office has not published data on baseline printing and postage expenditures from before the program was implemented. The records also lack information on the program's ongoing operational costs, including any fees paid to the third-party registration website. Therefore, the net financial benefit of the eNotices initiative to Maricopa County taxpayers remains undocumented in publicly accessible reports.