The issue of confidence is proving key in the Assessor’s Office election between incumbent Rick Hole and challenger Dan Lindgren, especially whether there’s confidence in Hole’s management style and confidence in his ability and decision-making regarding a critical software package necessary in figuring out the value of homes all across the Harbor.
Hole, running without party affiliation for his second term, says he works for the voters and every decision he’s made will ultimately benefit the taxpayers. The software development he pushed for as a way to save money had issues initially, but is now proving to be the right course, he says. Lindgren, an appraiser in the office running as a Democrat, describes his workplace as a place in chaos with employees fearful of their boss getting angry at them and a revaluation strategy that will end up hurting more taxpayers than helping them.
Lindgren had the advantage in the three-way primary, winning with 42 percent of the vote.
The state mandated the county move to an annual revaluation cycle, meaning property owners will receive adjustments to their property value every year. It could go up or down, depending on the real estate market. Before, the revaluation process was done every four years. The county will only physically inspect homes once every six years. That means it must use computer-assisted mass appraisal software to statistically map the other five-sixths of the county.
After at least three consultants failed at creating the software tools these past few years, the job was turned over exclusively to county programmer Ron Malizia.
Malizia said Tuesday he has “no confidence” in the ability for the software to actually do the work it’s supposed to do by statistically adjusting.
“There’s still bugs in it,” Malizia said. “I can get the bugs worked out, but would I trust the numbers that are generated? No. I’m telling all my friends and family to contest their values if they see anything out of the ordinary.”
Dan Matsen, lead sales analyst in the Assessor’s Office, is using the mass appraisal software and echoed Malizia’s thoughts. He actually wrote a letter to the taxpayers, urging the public to contest their values — before he’s even finished with his job.
“I don’t trust it,” Matsen said. “No one should trust these numbers. There are too many flaws in the system. It’s just been a rush job to get it finished just to meet deadlines and there are just too many glitches, too many things wrong.”
“You will be receiving Change of Value notices in the next few weeks and I urge you to check them carefully, Matsen’s letter states. “As a sales analyst, I cannot in good faith tell the taxpayers that their new assessed value will be correct.”
Told of Malizia and Matsen’s lack of confidence during a joint interview with Lindgren, Hole said, “Yes, I have confidence. That whole lack of confidence is surprising when I hear about it.”
“There is just one person who believes the system will work just fine — just one person,” Lindgren said, pointing at Hole. “The IT Department doesn’t. The staff doesn’t. I don’t think the (state) Department of Revenue does. They’ve been babysitting us weekly for the past year. I think we just need to move on. If I thought he was doing a great job, I wouldn’t have run again. I could have just stayed an appraiser for the next 30 years and retire and be fine, but I can’t sit by and watch what’s been going on for another four years.”
Hole counters, “Did it work perfectly the first time? No. Did it work perfectly the third time? No. But we’re going in and fixing it. And we’re getting it done and getting it done way earlier than last year even with all these road blocks sitting in front of us. … The bottom line is the system works. We don’t need to throw away the hard work that has been done and buy a third party off-the-shelf software.”
GLITCHES
A public records request with the County Assessor’s Office turned up 72 “help desk” tickets, showing problems with the software since April, while Hole previously said that the software was working as scheduled.
Lindgren produced hundreds more emails sent since last fall to Malizia and Hole from himself and other staffers with subject lines like “glitches” and “computer issues” that weren’t official “help desk” ticket items, as well.
“The problems keep turning up,” Lindgren said. “The glitches keep turning up.”
One email from an appraiser sent in August just contained a screen shot with the error message and the subject line, “Lookee here. It’s a special message.”
An email from the sales analyst on Sept. 11 states, “There was an unknown error while attempting to select the various Update-Parcels with A.B buildings. Please contact the systems programmer.”
“Every time there was an error, we would have to wait for it to be fixed,” Matsen said. “There’s just been so many errors. It’s wasted so much time.”
“I tried to save a sale on this parcel today and I got an error,” Lindgren wrote to Malizia on Sept. 15.
As recently as last week, before Malizia left for vacation, a glitch turned up.
“There’s at least one more fix I need to do before they can send out any revaluation notices, and then I need to fix a problem with the notices,” said Malizia, who works for the county commissioners, not the Assessor’s Office.
Lindgren says that the public is getting an impression, “Oh. Look everything is butterflies and unicorns. Well it’s not because the equability is off.” Lindgren alleges that the revaluation numbers that will be generated will not be accurate because the mass appraisal software has no way to separate out specific neighborhoods. For instance, Lindgren says Scammel Hill and the flats of Aberdeen both have homes with different characteristics, but the areas are being lumped together as one neighborhood. That means a home on the flats that isn’t worth as much as one on the hill could get valued the same — and then have to pay higher property taxes as a result.
“So, right now, it’s being broadbrushed with no way to pick up and change it … and it’s because we don’t have the functionality,” Lindgren said.
Lindgren found some specific errors in valuation that were happening in the Ocean Shores area and notified Hole in an email on Sept. 3, the records request showed.
“I was just going over my daily reports and marked that some of the land values in Ocean Shores are not correct,” Lindgren wrote. “If you look at the attached reports at the highlighted parcels, one dropped from $40,000 to $12,000. The other one dropped from $90,000 to $35,000. Both of these parcels had combinations done to them last year. These are double lots that got dumped to single lot values. So, basically, they are now valued at 50 percent of what they should be, which is also half of what other lots just like them are valued at. I think that the reason these parcels are not valued correctly is because the mass update is looking at the certified value and is missing any segment or combo parcels that were not the original certified values from last year. There’s probably a bunch of them out there. I just happened to notice a couple on my reports in Ocean Shores. Just thought you should know so this can get corrected.”
Lindgren says the county needs to dump the software that has been developed and buy a package system, which as of an estimate from December of last year, would cost $269,810 — and includes installation and a consultant to lead that installation. Lindgren says the price has since dropped further.
Hole points out that the agreement for off-the-shelf software also mandated a $47,000 annual maintenance cost, which he says the county doesn’t need to pay because he’s confident the current custom-built software works — and works better.
“There are less clicks to get data out of our system than to use some of these other third-party systems,” Hole said. “We built neighborhoods, sales histories.”
Lindgren, on the other hand, points out that the Assessor’s Office is already paying more than that for technology services to the county’s own programmer, who would be free to work on other issues, not concentrate purely on the Assessor’s Office, which is what Malizia says most of his days have been like lately.
Last year, Malizia billed the Assessor’s Office $72,701 for the time he spent working on software issues. Through October, he’s billed the department $39,923, according to budget records provided to The Vidette.
STAFF INPUT
In January, Hole notified staff in an email that he was considering looking at a third-party off-the-shelf system, seeking input from his staff because “I want to make sure we don’t end up with some of the same problems we currently have, only newer.”
“I feel we need the same thing we recommended three years ago — a third-party system,” one appraiser wrote. “Other counties use them successfully and they appear functional.”
“A canned system in which it integrates all systems together would be the right choice,” another employee wrote.
“In any event, we need something that has been tried and tested and proven to be successful,” an appraiser wrote.
“Stop inventing custom screens that don’t work,” yet another appraiser wrote.
Hole decided to stick with the current system.
“Any change of this order of magnitude is a big change,” Hole said. “The system is going to work. The system does work. The value is accurate and will get better as we move on. We’re doing a lot of hard work to get to where we are now. We’ve come a long way. It’s more than just a computer system. We’re reaching into the computer on the senior programs and the agriculture programs. We’re doing the job I was asked to do when I was hired and we got a system in place that moves us from cyclical to an annual valuation.”
The county had spent $180,000 on consultants for software and only ended up with three software tools — none of which Lindgren says appraisers use. Hole says that appraisers might be able to use the tools, someday.
Hole notes that the Assessor’s Office, basically, had a clean report from the Auditor’s Office. Hole says that proves he’s spent money wisely.
“We have wasted no money,” Hole said. “The state auditors came and looked through all the product we’ve done.” He points out that they were so thorough they found a $500 misstep by the commissioners. “These guys were picky. Did they find anything with the $180,000 we spent and said the assessor wasted the money? No.”
“They didn’t audit that,” Lindgren contests. “They audited the process.”
The State Auditor issued no findings or “management letters” about the Assessor’s Office. There’s only a few sentences in an “exit recommendations” report, which notes that the assessor continues to miss statutory deadlines.
“In our prior audits, we noted that the county did not meet statutory reporting deadlines by a significant amount of time for any of the submission/certification dates,” the exit recommendation states. “During our current audit, we noted the county is still not meeting the statutory reporting guidelines. We continue to recommend the county submit and certify their listings and tax roll on a timely basis so as to not adversely impact the assessor and other offices, departments and governments that rely on the Assessor’s work.”
The Assessor’s Office will end up missing its statutory deadlines this year, as well, Hole admitted.
That’s a big deal for local cities, who have officials trying to figure out their budgets.
Montesano and Elma are both in a budget crunch, for instance, so having accurate dollars is important, city officials have said. Missing those deadlines makes it harder for local jurisdictions to figure out how much money they’ll have the following year, since tax revenue fluctuates with property tax values around the county.
The state Department of Revenue did its own audit of the Assessor’s Office last year and issued some recommendations for how the office needs to proceed in the future. The state has required Hole to provide weekly updates.
Hole says to the state agency that the revaluation notices should be sent and everything should be provided to the cities by Oct. 24.
“I think the Assessor will meet the deadline,” Malizia said. “But, if the revaluation notices are sent, will they be right? Will the information be correct? I wouldn’t trust it.”
With complaints stacking up and employees lining up to endorse Lindgren, what’s it like for Hole to work in the Assessor’s Office these days?
“I think we’re moving on and we’re moving forward,” Hole said. “My job is not to go there and be happy. My job is to deliver the service that they expect from the Assessor’s Office — accurate and timely values. I like all the people who work there and I can’t control their response. I think it’s a good group. I like Dan. … There’s good professional people there.”
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