Candidate Profile: Patrick Clark, challenger for county assessor

Pat Clark is the technical support engineer for Adams County and the challenger in the general election race for Adams County Assessor.

He is a graduate of Kamiakin High School in Kennewick. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from Whitman College in Walla Walla. During his junior year of studies he lived abroad and studie at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Clark and his partner, Mary, have lived in Ritzville for three years.

Self-described as driven and energetic, Clark is a rookie on the Ritzville Fire Department.

The following is his candidate statement:

“As a candidate for Adams County Assessor I am uniquely qualified with the perspective, skills and experiences that will allow me to modernize the infrastructure and advance the efficiency and effectiveness of the office.

“I have an extensive and broad background in Information Technology management, systems operations, and applications management – all of which are essential to the successful administration of the Assessor’s duties and responsibilities. Having been trained in complex computer systems, network infrastructure, and software applications by national/international systems providers, equipment manufacturers and data carriers – I understand the complexities of technology and its applications and know how to leverage it effectively for the needs of Adams County. I am intimate with the Adams County systems and know how to make them robust, efficient, and effective.

“In addition to my networking and infrastructure background, I also have experience blending computer applications/services with the real estate and appraisal markets. As a manager and licensed real estate agent for an extensive residential and commercial Century 21 Real Estate Brokerage in the San Jose, Calif., area I worked to utilize the most efficient and cost-effective technologies in data management and appraisal utilization. I understand real estate, appraisal and property valuation principles and how they relate to the needs of Adams County, and I will use that knowledge proactively to maintain fair, equitable and consistent evaluations.

“Finally, I have had extensive experience in team leadership and personnel management both in the large corporation and small office environments. I value employees, their service to the community,and work to promote a spirit of cooperative, team-driven success.

“Data and information management has become increasingly critical to the Assessor’s roles and responsibilities as the sheer volume and complexity of these systems continues to expand. Underutilizing the available tools and data resources can be both costly and wasteful. I am intimately familiar with the technology resources available to the office and I will work tirelessly to leverage the existing and future tools for maximum possible efficiency.

“Maximum efficiency ultimately translates to cost effective operation, maximum value returned for taxpayer expenditure – providing for increased service levels for Adams County residents.”

The following are Clark’s responses during a recent interview with The Journal.

How did you become employed with the county?

“Moved to Adams County prior to employment with family in Tri-Cities and Spokane. Ritzville was the easy jumping off point for that. When I moved from California to Washington permanently. Betel flew me up in March. Got a job working for local IT company out of Moses Lake. Christian Boness had used this contractor on occasion. I actually had done some work up here on some simple projects. Literally one day I get a phone call.”

What is your specific role?

“I think everybody kind of understands ‘the local computer guy’ and at least from the county’s perspective that’s exactly right. We are the only two people that support all of those services. Basically if it’s plugged in and has a wire I’m probably responsible for it. We do all purchasing for the computer systems we maintain them. If it’s plugged in has a keyboard or a mouse, it’s our baby. It’s roughly 125 personal computers, end users.”

How does your background qualify you to be a county assessor?

“That’s great overwhelming question that everybody wants to ask. The nice thing is its almost perfection personified. The entities and the functions that we use within the assessor’s office, they’re absolutely founded on these technological principles and they’re getting more and more complex. We rely on two major components that are all statistics based to basically do our jobs. The important part of that is staying ahead of that, staying abreast of that keeping yourself up to date with it and leveraging those tools so we get the maximum potential out of the expenditure.”

What are the two major components?

“Geographical Information Systems. Every municipality of any size, every county in the nation is using GIS to basically build everything there is in the county. I liken it to the seed from which everything grows out of. It’s basically mapping. The ability to take every known piece of data we have. We should be pulling all of our information out of that. And number two is really the assessor’s database. We use TerraScan, it’s one of many vendors. That’s the reciprocal house for all of that data.”

Seems like quite a difference between what you do now and what you would do if elected?

“There’s this technology piece, which I think is ever critical. My career has really been technology focused but I’ve also brought in the management, the project management and the human resources management components along the way. Always had a much broader brush stroke. If you’re the tech guy that gets to hide in the server room all the time you don’t have to have any people skills. I have always been, there haven’t been a lot of me to go around in the organizations I’ve worked with, so I had to be the research assistant. I had to be smart enough. I had to be granular but I had to go talk to the CEO. I had to talk to the people in the board room.”

Describe your vision of what an assessor’s job should be?

“Ultimately, given the circumstances of our county, how big slash small we are. Reality is we’re not going to have a significant increase in staffing over the course of the unexpired three years term. The assessor number one has to be very hands on. They have got to be functional. They have got to be able to go out in the field. I’d like to be able to say at the end of the day, here’s what I’d like to accomplish today folks and here’s what I like about what we’re doing. Here’s what I don’t like about what we’re doing and I’m saying that from a position of I’ve done it, I did it, I understand it. I’d very much like to have my feet in the ground. You have to have talented people in the right places to do good work and at the same time I think you have to back that up and say trust, but verify. Did it get accomplished? Did we meet our goals? You need a coach. No football team coaches itself.”

What would Pat bring to the assessor’s office if elected?

“Number one it’s energy. It’s just the way I function. If it’s not worth getting up in the morning to go do, I’ll just stay home. I look at assessor’s office, it’s not only important, it’s mission critical and parts of it scare me a little bit in that we’re not doing some things I really think we need to get our hands wrapped around. Assessor’s office is not somewhere, where you’re going to be famous.”

What needs to be done?

“There’s some things I have looked at over the last two years that I actually believe I’m the only person that kind of cares. I come from software development, systems application side of the fence. We don’t have a back up plan in place for our vendor (TerraScan). And I know for a fact that there has been no small amount of consideration that our vendor may not be fiscally and managerially viable. We have been waiting for at least two, maybe three years for software updates that have yet to come to fruition. That’s a screaming red flag in my world that says you are toast. The servers that we’re running this stuff on needed to be thrown away last year. I think we’re waiting for something that may not happen. I don’t want to rattle the cage and say we’re doomed but we better be planning for it. There are several vendors easily we could migrate too. TerraScan was probably the most cost effective of the bunch. That change could result in a very significant capital outlay. Again it may be something we need to plan ahead for. Because if you crash, die burn, you’re going to get stuck. You don’t want to make that capital outlay in one, unexpected budget season.”

Property owners most often come in contact with the office when property values go up. How do you plan to work with them?

“I want to be a little more seamless to the folks. This is me personally, I kind of feel the assessor’s office has a vibe of, we would prefer to get the stuff out, have it land and when and if you complain, we’ll deal with it. Rather mechanical in the processing of that. I think if you add the human element. They are our external clients. These are the people we are essentially receiving a paycheck to serve. If we need to spend some extra time and energy understanding their circumstances, their environment, where they’re coming from. If I need to get in a rig and drive to somebody’s home and sit down with them over a cup of coffee to understand, let’s do that. Let’s not be so hasty to say ‘our records are dead accurate and so we’re just going to, you can go off to the Board of Equalization which doesn’t exist and fix it yourself. Maybe there’s something we can do before we get that far.”

How to you explain increases in property values?

“Bring stats. We talk a lot in government. We hear things. You say things. We get sound bytes where it’s a newspaper or television or somebody just up soap-boxing who says well this is the way it is. Prove it to me. You don’t have to have a PhD in rocket science to understand. Let me show you the comparable sales in the county, your neighborhood, your region. Let me show you the tools that I use in real terms, human terms. Let me show you what I have to deal with to make the decision.”

Board of equalization

“It needs to exist. Immediately. I think you need to drive this from the assessor’s office. I will make it happen. It’s not a hard gig. I don’t know we’ve gone out and done enough. It’s the homeowner’s first stop in the process if they disagree with the assessor. It’s checks and balances. The volunteers are there. We can find them.”

What experience do you have in relation to property assessment and valuation?

“I’m a former licensed real estate in southern California. Held my license in good stead for quite awhile. I did that not specifically to sell real estate. Colleagues developed their own brokerage. I came on as their operations director. I helped develop a couple offices for them. The kicker is, I need to become a licensed real estate agent, I can’t develop the systems if I don’t understand how the guy in the street gets down the road. I have the trades background as well.”

How long did you have your real estate license?

“At least three years.”

Direct involvement with appraising?

“We were not only residential, but commercial. I got to learn the whole capitalization sequences. This is exactly our problem in Adams County. There are often no comparable sales. But you can capitalize it based on what you do, what’s your net, your gross, overhead, land value. We can come up with a value that makes sense.”

How familiar are you with state laws governing the assessor’s office?

“Familiar in the sense you can go out there and read them. I have done my research. I’ve asked a plethora of questions from our former assessor. It’s easy enough to go online and read the RCWs. There’s going to be things I will need to dive into. I think I will want to and I’m not required to by the state, I will want to get appraisal certified. How do you manage a team of people, two of which are certified, if you’re not?”

What do you tell a voter when persuading them to vote for you?

“It’s easy for me. Adams County really has an opportunity and it’s a rather unique opportunity. You’re not going to see the likes of me on a regular basis. Here’s an opportunity to tackle some problems that theoretically are not going to get addressed. The status quo is fine. There’s nothing wrong with it. But will you be getting the most advantage from the energy and tax dollars that you are spending? You will if you elect me.”

If you get elected what do you want to accomplish in the short term?

“There’s three big ones right now. Board of Equalization day one. Get started, ramp it out. It should be doable in a year. Setting a plan for TerraScan. What do you do with that vendor? Eighteen months from start to finish to a really good understanding of yes, we can work with this vendor. I think we’re going to be okay. We’re going to set some milestones. Setting the standards of how we work with the clientele. Certainly from Othello’s perspective we need to be a lot more visible to Othello. I don’t know what that means exactly. If we need to be in Othello a couple of days a week, then we need to be in Othello a couple of days a week.”

Long term?

“What I’d really love to say I can accomplish and I believe this, I want to use our tools. Longer than 18 months GIS needs to have a proper coordinator. That coordinator needs to be based in the assessor’s office. It’s very important that is a collaborative effort across the entire county. That includes the auditor’s office. It definitely includes the sheriff’s office and probably the biggest collaborator has to be the department fo public works. We need to organize GIS from a central tier.”

Are you doing this for a bigger paycheck?

“I have heard that. I would love to have them address it to me. If anybody wants to know what my motivations are? I am pretty easy to get a hold of. It would be suicidal of me to say that I am not interested in personal growth. That’s dumb. Is the assessor’s office a way for me to grow? The answer is absolutely. Is it more money than what I make now? Yes. These are facts. The reality is if I am so concerned with my market value, what in God’s name am I doing in Ritzville. Even at assessor’s pay, 60 percent below my market value in Spokane.

“Mary and I chose (Ritzville) for a reason. This gives me a way to go back to something my dad told me when I was 14 years old and I told him he was crazy. I could not understand, why my father, who seemed to be perfectly intelligent told me, ‘There will come a time in your life young man where you will give up pay for lifestyle.’”