As a part of Castle Country Radio’s series of Meet the Candidates events, on Monday, Oct. 14 candidates for Carbon County Assessor Democrat Robert Olson and Republican Amy Schmidt-Peters. The candidates participated in a discussion that showed off the nonpartisan nature of the office with both candidates often finding themselves in agreement on problems the assessors office faces and some potential solutions to those problems.
The first major question the candidates faced was regarding the general duties the assessor’s office performs and which of those duties they believe to be most important. Schmidt-Peters spoke first, “I think the duties that need to happen in the assessor office is making sure we’re available for folks and that is just getting the team on board setting our goals for the public and letting us let them know that we are available for them. The second one is to make sure we’re trained well and that is just to make sure that we’re a licensed office so that we can do our duties.”
Olson also replied to the question,” I think the most important duty is to assess fair and accurate property values to the parcels throughout the county seems to be the main issue that’s been generated by all the dysfunction in the assessor’s office over the past couple years. People are unhappy because they look at it from a common sense standpoint and they don’t understand their value, so they go to the assessor’s office and a lot of times in the past couple of years they haven’t been getting straight answers on why the property is assessed for what it’s assessed for.” He continued,” Secondly, the most important duty would be training my staff properly which entails quite a few different things. The previous assessor staff was trained well for quite a long time and most of them I think all of them left within a year or year and a half this last term so the staff that’s there now has been trained only over the last couple of years. And I don’t believe from what I’ve heard that they have been trained properly.”
Each candidate also took the time to explain what the term “fair and equitable” means to them. Again starting with Schmidt-Peters, she defined the term as,” I’ll give you an example of something unfair. If we start with somebody paying more on their property and somebody else not paying as much but the two properties are very similar to each other having the same type of acreage and almost the same type of house that’s probably not fair. So making it fair is making sure you properly assess these. Do each of them have a finished basement? Say everything is equal but one’s paying $500 and the other’s paying $800. Fair and equitable means I would bring these as close together as possible and have them pay the same assessment amount.”
Olson rebutted,” What that means is fair market value. There are different types of values that you can estimate on properties; the most common one that appraisers use is fair market value … So as Amy said we want to be fair we want to have someone that could put that property up for sale and sell it for or below what we’re assessing it for because say their house is worth $250,000 and for some reason, the assessor makes a mistake and assigns it up a value of $500,000 then they’re going to pay too much property taxes because it’s over-assessed and unfortunately that’s what has happened in this county.”
Both candidates also addressed the controversy that the assessor’s office has found itself embroiled in over the past few years. Both explained their plans to make the office run smoothly, with Olson stating,” I have four things I want to do as part of my platform, and one of them is to restore professionalism and confidence in the office of the assessor. And how I will do that is number one, I will train the employees properly; that is I think the most important thing I can do because they will be interfacing with the public as much or more as I am. First of all, I’m going to require them to take classes, second of all I’m going to require them to learn how to inspect a property in the field accurately and third I’m going to require them to set a goal for becoming licensed.”
Schmidt-Peters also answered,” One thing is making sure we have a well-trained office. Going in, sitting down with the folks there and making sure ‘Hey what’s your goal? What do you want to accomplish?’ I’m a person that mentors and I like to coach others and I help them reach their potential. If they want to get their assessing license, or they want to be an expert in Green Belt, whatever it might be, I want to help them give those resources to them.” explained Schmidt-Peters,” The second one is communicating to the public where we are at and those milestones that we’re accomplishing. How can I help you understand your property tax better? How do we value your property tax? And then number three is transparency. Transparency in letting you know all those things helps us run a nice smooth office, being well educated, being able to communicate with you, and then of course being transparent with you. Because if we don’t know an answer we’re going to try and we’re going to get it and we’re going to help you understand your property taxes.”
What’s Next?
Our next event on Tuesday, Oct. 15, will feature Carbon County Commission Candidates Democrat David Palacios and Republican Jarred Haddock in the Central Instructional Building Room 101 at Utah State University Eastern.
All of these events are free and open to the public and will start at 5 p.m. The events will also be streamed live on KOAL 107.3 FM and 750 AM and on our YouTube channel KOAL-Castle Country Focus. Questions for the candidates are still being accepted for all of these events. If you have a question for any of these races, you can email them to election2024@koal.net.
Voter Information
Mail-in ballots will be sent out to actively registered voters this week.
Early Voting for the 2024 General Election will be conducted at the Carbon County Administration Building, in Price in the Downstairs Conference Room and Atrium, during the hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. beginning Tuesday, Oct. 29 through Friday, Nov. 1.
Registered voters can request that a ballot be mailed to them if they failed to receive one through Oct. 26.
Oct. 25 is the last day to register to vote without having to vote provisionally. Voters wanting to register will need to show a valid form of photo identification that shows their name, photograph and current address or two different forms of identification that show name and current address, i.e. utility bill, bank statement, etc.
Voters may vote in person on Nov. 5, at the Carbon County Administration Building from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.