Randy Mask does some outreach Nov. 16 at Savannah Center.
Randy Mask does some outreach Nov. 16 at Savannah Center.

When Randy Mask took office last January as the Sumter County Tax Collector he made the focus of his tenure two simple words: Excellence and integrity. With three decades of experience as a supervisor at SECO, and eight years as a Sumter County Commissioner, Mask has set out to run his office as efficiently as possible, with an emphasis on providing great customer service and consolidating costs.
Perhaps the most noteworthy and important change has been the consolidation of multiple procedures and departments between the Tax Collector’s office and the Sumter County Board of County Commissioner’s office. For example, before Mask took office, the IT departments for both governmental entities were separate entities. When he made the decision to combine them, the result was an estimated savings of $60,000 annually. Both offices also combined human resources offices for additional savings.

Furthermore, the Tax Collector’s office previously stamped and carried their own mail, a process that took multiple man-hours each week to perform. With consolidation, the Tax Collector’s office took advantage of the Board of County Commissioner’s automated postal machine and combined mail carriers, saving countless hours in processing and approximately $3,000 in leasing fees.
Aside from the consolidation between offices, Mask reshaped the internal operations of his own office the first day he took office, restructuring procedures and policies to eliminate overtime and inefficiency. Simple changes made to office hours, and the splitting of shifts have resulted in better service to the public and less need for overtime. Additionally, he has placed an emphasis on cross training and, by the end of the year, will have his 26 employees knowledgeable on all 111 types of transactions the office faces during its day-to-day operations. Within four years, Mask plans to have every employee certified as a tax collector.

After taking office, Mask studied each office’s operations and noticed that many customers would stand in the wrong line or would lack proper documentation. To help streamline this process, Mask implemented greeters in his offices and reduced long, unnecessary lines. The addition of Q-flow, customer  tracking  software, has also contributed to the improvement in processing time, keeping every customer informed of wait time, and allowing Mask to keep track of how long his personnel are taking to process transactions.

The office has also made a push to become paperless. The installment of high speed processors at all three offices means checks can be processed during the same day, and a redesigned website has placed an emphasis on user-friendliness and efficiency.  The addition of email, which the office uses for memos, interoffice communications, paycheck stubs, distribution reports, and transmitting yearly statements allows employees to spend more time tending to customers rather than processing information. Documents are scanned into a clerks file to maintain a digital database, and DMV reports, payment listing updates, and distributions are all converted to PDF files.

In only 10 months as Tax Collector,  Mask has not only increased work stations and services at each office, but has also increased the scope of his supervision by moving towards digital solutions and restructuring management roles. He is saving tax payers tens of thousands of dollars by changing payment options on the office’s website (accepting E-checks), and replacing old policies with cost-saving ones.

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