2014-01-08 Board of Ethics Minutes

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mentioned. It’s also raising value. I know some people—in fact, one of the instances that really started this all was when I disqualified myself from visiting a property where I’d spoken to someone about real estate years ago. I never had any financial interest. I disqualified myself from going and remeasuring their property. She had called us out there because she wanted her property taxes to be raised so her appraisal would come in higher and she could re-fi her home. So there’s a number of different instances where property values that are assessed by the County do affect what happens for these people in the real world and could affect someone on their own property. The final thing is that it’s really easy to solve this. You just take her out of her neighborhood. She has a bunch of neighborhoods. Any appraiser does, has 40, 50. She said 10,000 properties. There’s tons of neighborhoods. I think I have a hundred. It’s just to remove that one neighborhood from me and give it to another appraiser, and then give one back—just flip flop it and you have no problem at all. It’s a really simple solution. As Marilyn mentioned, we have pretty high turnover here at the County. It’s not like that much information is lost, any more than it’s lost when we lose an appraiser at any position. But basically the Code of Ethics is there to make sure we have a clear mind to avoid any potential conflicts, and to the very least disclose and disqualify, and neither of those things happened. I think Lisa gave a pretty decent presentation on the process. The only thing I would say is in my experience, I’ve never had a neighborhood have a value changed by a supervisor. I don’t know how many got changed last year. They might be able to provide some data for that for you. But I’d say, to Mr. Sitko’s comments at our last meeting, it’s definitely the exception. It’s not the rule, it happens very rarely. So the recommendations of the appraiser are taken pretty seriously. They train us, and they assume, to a large extent, that we are competent to do our jobs. And that assumption could come into some problems later on. So it’s a potential violation, and that’s why I’m seeking the Board’s opinion. That’s all I have to say. I’d be happy to answer any questions anybody else has. MR. BALSIS: Any questions from members of the Board? I have no questions. MR. HENRICKS: I have one question. As to Petition 2013-05, which would be Mary Ann Todd-Waller. Do you have any information that she actually made an appraisal on her property? MR. DRUTAR: I know she sets the values for her neighborhood. MR. HENRICKS: No, on her property. If it had any effect on her property. MR. DRUTAR: It doesn’t appear in her situation that her setting the values will change her property, but it changes her neighborhood. If you wanted to play total devil’s advocate, you could say that your neighborhood value— 14