Candidate Profile: Sherri Brewer, incumbent for county assessor

Sherri Brewer currently serves as the Adams County Assessor. She was appointed to the position following the resignation of David Anderson.

Brewer has had a long career of working within the agency, having spent about 11 years as the administrative assistant/appraisal office supervisor under two county assessors, Anderson and Jerry Crossler.

Prior to that she worked in the county’s public works department and as co-owner/manager of the Ritzville Les Schwab Tire Center.

Brewer has lived in the county for 50 years, having graduated from Washtucna High School in 1977. She has lived in Ritzville for 33 years. She has three daughters.

Since going to work in the assessor’s office, Brewer has taken a number of training courses and special courses that relate to the role of the office. Among those are: International Association of Assessing Officers’ Fundamentals of Real Property Appraisal, Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice and Senior/Disabled Persons Property Tax Exemptions and Deferrals.

In the community, Brewer has volunteered for the Historic Ritzville Days Western Art Show, Ritzville Blues Festival, Relay For Life and the hospital district’s Health Fair.

The following is her candidate statement:

“Following the resignation of the former Assessor, I was appointed Acting Assessor by the County Commissioners in January of this year. After several conversations with friends, family and colleagues, I made the decision to submit my name to the Republican Party. On Feb. 1, 2011, I was unanimously appointed by the Commissioners to serve as the Adams County Assessor.

“Prior to my appointment as Assessor, I worked in the Assessor’s office for 11 years as the Appraisal Office Supervisor, Administrative Assistant. My job duties have included the supervision of staff, working with taxpayers and taxing districts, property tax calculations, review and audit of exemption programs and Department of Revenue reporting. I am also responsible for analyzing the computer data in our assessment program and providing backup for the staff in the office.

“The past experience in the Assessor’s office has allowed me to make informed decisions on restructuring job duties to increase efficiency, while reducing the office budget.

“I have a strong background in the accounting field. Prior to working for the county I was co-owner/manager of the Ritzville Les Schwab Tire Center and worked as a para-professional in both Ritzville and Odessa for a local accounting firm.

“My goals for the office are to provide fair and equitable values on all properties, to increase training and efficiency and provide customer service to property owners throughout the county.

“Being an elective official is not about being a figure head, but being an integral working part of the office. I have the knowledge, the background and the experience to fulfill the duties of this office.”

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

You have been assessor for how long?

“Since January.”

Where did you start as a county employee?

“A job opening came up at public works. I went to work at public works in January of 1999. I was hired to do accounts payable and inventory control. I worked there until August of 2000 when the job came open in the assessor’s office.”

What was that first assessor’s role?

“Basically it supervises operations of the whole office. Notoriously in the past elected officials only put in the minimum number of hours. Therefore someone was there to make sure the jobs were being done.”

You have extensive training in the department. How has your knowledge progressed?

“The largest part and probably the most important part of the job is once the values are set in September is getting the information out to the taxing districts with an estimate of what their maximum tax collections can be. These were some of the classes that came up and at that time you needed to take them to be prepared for anything. There’s a lot of different programs. There’s the senior exemption program. In order to manage the senior exemption program you’ve got to know something about income, tax returns, capital gains and business loses. I came into all of it from a background in accounting so the step into it was my area of expertise. When I worked in the accounting firm we did tax returns and financial statements by hand. The training is continuous year in and year out.”

Within the county you work with many taxing districts?

“For all taxing districts throughout the county and there’s senior districts and junior districts. Senior districts would be county current expense, county road. Next in line is the cities. Once you have finalized your values and have their budgets so you know how much they are requesting, then there are limitations. County current expense is allowed $1.80. Fire districts are allowed up to $1. But fire district is divided into first 50 cents and second 50 cents.”

Is that a complicated process?

“Yes. State statutes allow regular levy for certain taxing districts that cannot exceed $5.90. It’s called the 590 calculation. Other levies are known as the one percent constitutional limit, not to be confused with the 101 percent. All these calculations go together for each individual taxing district. Then they have to be spread out by tax code area.”

Why is it most people think the assessor’s office’s primary role is setting property values?

“It’s two fold on that. Someone will call in about their value. My first question is are you calling about your values or your taxes? Regular levies basically stay at approximately the same rate and then you add on voter approved levies. That’s where taxes will fluctuate from year to year. I had a farmer call in and say ‘you are valuing me way too high.’ I calculate his property values went up maybe two percent but his taxes had gone up a large amount because the Washtucna Parks and Recreation District had not run a voter approved maintenance and operation one year. So the next year they ran a double and the fire district also ran a voter approved levy. This all compounded to make it look like it was an increase in property values when in effect it was a result of voter approved levies.”

Do you see the process as being equitably spread across all of the shoulders of the taxpayers?

“I really do. Everything we do in our office is audited by the Department of Revenue and also by the State Auditors. Department of Revenue audits the levies and the senior exemption program and personal property. Every item that happens in our office is audited in some manner.”

Why was it the right time for you to step up when the position was vacated?

“It was a really hard decision because of having to go through the election process. I felt confident that I was already doing the job. It was a good fit. I am a law and rule follower and I believe, especially because of the audit process that we go through, those laws and rules are set there to protect the taxpayers and the property owners and I believe we should follow those laws and rules to the best of our ability. And, there wasn’t a lot of interest in the position. Part of that was the pay. Make sure the taxpayers were being treated fairly. I’m comfortable in my job. I love my job.”

Does the assessor’s office have a team atmosphere?

“We have a really good team. We have some real good team work there.”

You are a hands-on assessor?

“Definitely. Being an elected official is not about being a figurehead, but being an integral working part of the office. I am and I will continue to do that.”

What is the assessor’s job?

“In every day world in other counties the assessor is an elected official that pops in and checks to see that the supervisors and chief appraisers are making sure everyone is doing their job. Budget wise it’s not fiscally responsible to do that here. I have gone to Othello and done home visitations for seniors who don’t want to leave their home and I’m going to be doing more of that.”

What can voters expect Sherri Brewer to bring to the table?

“Compassion. Truth. Honesty. A respect for the taxpayers and a respect for the state law.”

Where does the public contact come in?

“Since we have went online with TaxSifter, we have a lot of contact with fee appraisers. The traffic that we have the phone calls that we have, have really slowed down, which has really helped. Especially due to the fact we still are down one employee. That has relieved a lot of the traffic in the office because people can look these things up now. Besides people calling in about property values and assessed values, we have people inquiring about personal property. A lot of the traffic we get coming in is senior citizens, disabled people or those who are behind on their taxes. The question is ‘are there programs out there that can help me?’”

Have you gone out and done appraisals?

“I have gone out in the field. I started on getting my appraisers certification.”

Do you have a good grasp of state laws as they apply to the assessor’s office?

“Pretty good. The Department of Revenue is the expert we can go to. If you can’t get assistance from them, then there’s the other assessors, Washington State Association of County Assessors. We spend a lot of time together. The Eastern Washington assessors get together and deal with things together.”

When you talk one-on-one with a voter, what are you telling them is a good reason to vote for you?

“Experience counts so much. I know the ins and outs of our software program, TerraScan. There aren’t many things I can’t pull out of there, export to a spreadsheet and analyze and make judgments on values or isolate items out. For the majority of my time I work in two programs, TerraScan and Excel.”

Is there a large learning curve for this job?

“You need to know, if you’re going to make a change, what’s the impact? Are you following the laws? If I go out the end of November, final taxes haven’t been calculated. It’s going to leave a big hole. I don’t know how quick someone can learn without someone there to train him.”

What are your short-term goals?

“We’re making a list. Some of the things we have been lacking when we haven’t had two full-time appraisers has been going out and doing physical inspections at the time of sale of property so we have a better idea of what the quality and condition are at the time. We have numerous parcels of farm ground that aren’t in the open space program that could be in the open space program. Somewhere along the line the person that owned it, someone chose not to put that piece of property in. We need to inform those people that the program is available and give them an option to get into that program. Senior exemptions. This coming year, the majority of the seniors, when it is time for them to do their renew, are from the Othello area. Generally when they get that letter that they need to renew, they get in their car and drive down here and it doesn’t matter what the weather’s like. I’m not comfortable with that. I will be setting up appointments and times in Othello. There are so many things.”

If there’s one thing you want to say you have accomplished as an assessor, what would that be?

“That I have been there for the taxing districts and the taxpayers. That I have been true and fair to each and every one of them.”

Is TerraScan ailing?

“We can make that program do anything we need it to do. It may be old and clunky. It may take a little more work but it functions and it does its job. A year from now we are going to be in a new system and it has amazing things. From some of the testing that has been done, we will be able to do regression modeling within the program. This thing is being built for us. For Washington counties the way Washington counties want it built. They aren’t selling this product to large counties. They want to focus their attention on the smaller counties. Our new programming should be coming in next summer or early next fall, the new version of TerraScan. We are already training in that program. They are giving us two sessions a week right now. We are already training in the program. We’re seeing it live and we’re able to voice our opinions. I have worked extensively with TerraScan.”

How do you use the Geographical Information System?

“We are required to provide maps, parcel maps in any type of format. In the past parcel maps were hand drawn. We did go a step further and got a road layer from the public works department. Using grant funds a parcel layer was made for the GIS system. We have a parcel layer map within the GIS software.”

What is the department’s financial situation?

“I am working off of David Anderson’s budget. When I put my budget together for the coming year, because of the restructuring in the office, I came in at approximately $11,000 less than the 2011 budget. It ended up being about $15,000 less than what was budgeted for 2010. But still making sure that there was room within that budget for training. We have a lot of training we need to do with a new employee and two appraisers that have to have so many hours in order to keep their accreditation.”

Board of equalization, what’s the status?

“At this point, all appeals are being handled by the county commissioners and I am not comfortable with that. It has been that way for three years at least. They did two years of appeals in one year. We’re trying to get that back activated. I am not responsible for the Board of Equalization because we are separate. They act under the county commissioners. I have submitted approximately eight names to one of the commissioners for them to review and contact. We have one, possibly two, appeals that will actually need to be heard.”