Assessors meetings discuss real data

After receiving the staff report that projected a 4.4 million dollar savings by centralizing our assessment process and eliminating the 18 township elected assessors, our Chairman Aaron Lawlor scheduled 6 meetings with all the townships to discuss data, process, and governance outcomes. The Lake County staff that produced the report has not participated and we will be going back to committee in early June to get permission to engage them.

I attended all six meetings with Township Assessors, Supervisors, almost all fellow County Board Members, and other affected employees. The majority of the discussions were positive and constructive on pursuing accurate data, best practices, and unified standards across the county. Since our staff has not been taking part in these discussions I am very anxious to hear their response.

Much of these first discussions centered around the true cost levied upon the citizens for the 18 assessors. The county study pinned that number at approximately 8.2 million based on budget data that was available. Townships levy taxes for both the Supervisor and Assessors together. While they have two separate budget documents, some of the costs for assessors is within the Supervisors budget such as the Assessors salary. In these meetings the townships took the positions that real expenditures should be the basis of cost, not the budgeted numbers. This has created a bit of a apples vs. oranges comparison that does muddy the water. The true cost to our citizens is what is the assessors budgeted cost that is levied? That is the true cost to taxpayers! Anyway, I am hopeful future meetings will nail these costs down. The assessors preliminary expenditure numbers have been around 7.1 million, 1.1 million less than Lake County staffs preliminary 8.2 projections. But again this is projected budgeted numbers vs. preliminary expenditures so more work needs to be done before any real determination can take place. So at this point I have no reason to believe the staff report projections are inaccurate.

The second concern of the assessors was the projected staffing of the centralized county system. The townships believed that with their analysis of actual work loads and the data from the county's surveying, the County's actual projected staff levels with a centralized operation and associated costs would rise. Again, our staffs response is crucial to final determination.

The third major issue discussed was the impact on the citizens and the customer service at the local level. While we do envision an assessment presence throughout the county we have not yet evaluated the programming on having a local presence. As I explained at the meetings, I thought there would be two levels of customer service, one topical and the second more professional. For example we could partner with township supervisors or municipal clerks to be a place for citizens to fill out exemption and senior freeze forms. They could also print out basic assessment information that could be received online.  At a more professional level we could use some of the vacated space of our existing townships to have permanent/roaming satellite places for a local presence of Lake County assessment staff. Now, these are just my initial thoughts and as this discussion continues, ideas will turn into actual recommendations with hard numbers. I am however not expecting these costs to be substantial compared to the existing 18 township office currently filled with assessment personnel.

Other issues of consistency and accuracy were discussed with the assessors voicing concern of time and examination of local neighborhoods under a centralized system. They did however agree for the most part that there were issues of different assessment values across township lines that negatively affected taxpayers.

More work needs to be done to refine data as a first step and then it is up to our state legislators to pursue remedies for Lake County to follow. As I said at the meetings, we need to be prepared with accurate data and costs before the State legislature moves on this issue. We all need to position ourselves to be constructive partners in the process of legislation that will provide best practice and the most efficient governance.