The Price is Right: Assessor Race Face-Off Brings Vows of Accuracy

Two candidates in the first-ever race for St. Louis County Assessor—a Missouri state legislator and a realtor—both promised they would get property assessments right the first time, during a Saturday.

Voters agreed in November to elect county assessors to a 4-year term, in a move ostensibly to give residents greater sway over property taxes. Tuesday, April 5 is Election Day.

Republican candidate and long-time realtor  faced Democratic candidate and three-term Missouri State Rep. (83rd Dist.) in a  co-sponsored by the Lemay and  at  in Affton.

Each candidate had 15 minutes to explain how they would straighten out what both said was a broken assessment system and then answered questions from an audience of about 75 St. Louis County residents.

The St. Louis County Department of Revenue’s Assessment Division assesses all real and personal property in St. Louis County. Assessed values typically drive the amount of taxes a resident pays.

Wood, a real estate agent for 37 years and owner of L.K. Wood Realty, told the audience he is the only candidate with experience in selling, assessing and appraising real estate and said he already has a plan to remake the office.

Zimmerman, a three-term state representative and Harvard Law School graduate, said his experience as an assistant in the Missouri Attorney General’s office working on consumer fraud issues, coupled with his experience representing constituents in the Missouri General Assembly over the course of three terms makes him qualified to be the assessor. 

Zimmerman said he thinks the people in St. Louis County want an assessor’s office that is “committed to fairness, accountability, independence and responsiveness.”

Wood described his view of the job. He said the first thing an assessor has to do is bring assessments in line with property values. Then the assessor must make sure that when there is a mistake in an assessment, the property owner “is not treated horribly” by appeals officers.

Wood said that in St. Charles, where the assessor has about 160,000 parcels to assess, and in Franklin County, where the assessor has about 60,000 parcels to assess, just about one percent of the property owners in each area protest and challenge their property assessments. In St. Louis County, where there are 390,000 parcels, 18,000 people appealed their assessments in 2007 and 16,000 people appealed theirs in 2009, he added.

“When that many people are complaining, something is wrong with the system,” Wood said. “I guarantee I know what it takes to keep customers and people satisfied. I’m not a politician and I have no political agenda. I’m a man on a mission, I just want to go in there and make this thing right.”

Zimmerman said he believes property values should be frozen until a property is sold, and then establish a new assessment. This would allow homeowners to stay in their homes longterm, even if property values skyrocketed.

“This can be done,” Zimmerman said. “It’s not a Democratic or Republican idea. It’s not particularly controversial. It just takes a little bit of will, and it takes the parties working together.”

Zimmerman said there is no “Democratic way or a Republican way to assess a home.”

“There is only the right way, the fair way, the transparent way,” Zimmerman said. “Partisan politics have to be checked at the door of this office.”

Wood said if elected he would immediately appoint a blue-ribbon commission of professionals from the legal, appraisal and real estate industries to attack the appeal process and end the use of computer-generated comparable sales figures.

Wood said he wants to make sure people trust the assessor’s office to get it right the first time, make sure people are treated with respect, and wants to ensure the assessor’s office is sufficiently trained and staffed to carry out the assessments.

Property reassessment, by state law, occurs every other year, in odd-numbered years. However, 2001’s drive-by property inspection brouhaha, during which assessments were carried out by workers driving by certain properties and assessing them from their vehicles without doing a physical inspection, eventually led to the resignation of the county’s appointed assessor.

Recent decreases in property values with sharp increases in property taxes ultimately led voters in 2010 to approve a St. Louis County Charter amendment establishing the elective office of assessor.

Assessed values are applied to the tax rates established by various taxing districts to arrive at the total taxes levied on those properties. Most of those taxing districts, such as school and fire districts, are allowed to raise tax rates to offset any drops in property values.