The Chamber’s Candidates Forum was a huge success and City Council chamber were standing room only. Check out the Assessor candidates face-off at http://www.tellernetcast.com/netcast-tv/archives/special-events/teller-county-candidates-forum-july-12,-2010.aspx , starting at 46:35. The questions posed to the candidates included:
What are your top three priorities? Mine are education, information, and customer service. Not just education of staff (which is a priority), but education of and to the public, since next year is a ‘reset’ (re-valuation) year. Making sure our citizens have the resources, methods and information at hand to protest their valuation is a high priority. I plan to be out and about the community and visiting with homeowner’s associations, business entities, chambers of commerce, and real estate professionals. Providing the proper information, as well as easy access to that information is critical.
How would you handle a 10% budget reduction? I would start with travel and training. I personally paid around $625 for three online appraisal courses to obtain a Registered Appraiser license. The Assessor’s current budget provide for over $2100 travel and training expenses to take these same courses – multiply that times two people, that is a potential reduction of $3000 for those two employees only! And there are more potential reductions for travel and training. I have other ideas, too, but wasn’t given adequate time to discuss those. While the incumbent disagreed with me on training as he felt that online courses result in a high failure rate, he had no suggestions.
Other questions involving the importance of using the income approach for commercial properties, the ‘weighting’ of the various three methods used, and the flexibility of the Assessor were posed.
This event is an excellent way to compare the candidates side-by-side, click here.
