The Halifax County Tax Department was one of 10 projects out of 48 to receive a 2025 Civil Excellence in Innovation Award from the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners in partnership with Civic Federal Credit Union.
The awards, according to Deputy Halifax County Manager Christina Wells, recognize county programs that highlight innovative solutions and achieve notable costs and resource savings which improve services and operations across North Carolina counties.
The department’s project was improving communication and efficiency within the tax office and was implemented by Tax Coordinator Doris Hawkins, Tax Assessor C. Shane Lynch, and Administrative Officer Kristen B. Coker.
“We started out just trying to improve communication but we’ve expanded it much further into helping us expand projects and keep on timelines,” Hawkins told county commissioners today.
The department implemented Microsoft Teams before 2024 and Coker took upon herself to learn about the program “and to build it out in ways — many more ways — than we ever imagined,” Hawkins said. “This really is a product of her hard work and of course the rest of our team accepting and doing their work in a little bit different manner and being open-minded about it.”
In a summary of the program submitted for the award, Hawkins wrote the problem came down to how the department with its 21 employees, spread across two divisions and multiple sections, could achieve the department's core mission of accurately assessing all taxable property and then collecting the tax bills in a timely manner.
With Microsoft Teams, dedicated team channels replaced the typical deluge of emails, phone calls and notes on desks. Channels exist for key areas such as Collections, Real Property and Problems and Questions among others. More apps were added and other departments joined to address specific needs.
Lynch and his staff used MS Planner to manage 2024 revaluation appeals from submission to decision during the early months of the year.
Hawkins uses it to track properties under foreclosure.
Staff in the county attorney's office was added and there's now an almost constant back-and-forth between collections and the paralegal to discuss progress, Hawkins wrote.
“The department's existing staff have been very willing to learn new ways to do old jobs,” Hawkins wrote in the summary. “Management is pleased with the results thus far and looks forward to adding new features so the next generation of tax employees will have one less obstacle in the future.”
