Janet Seekins, who has worked for the Clark County Assessor’s Office for nearly 30 years, said Thursday she will run for the top job.
Seekins made her announcement a day after Clark County Assessor Linda Franklin said she will not seek a third term.
Seekins, 53, will run as a Democrat.
Two Republicans, Peter Van Nortwick and Daniel Weaver, have said they will run.
Next week is filing week.
The top two vote-getters in the Aug. 17 primary, regardless of political affiliation, will advance to the general election on Nov. 2.
Seekins has never run for office.
“I’ve always just done the job,” she said. “My job has always been talking to taxpayers. I enjoy working with them.”
Seekins, a graduate of Evergreen High School, is a senior residential appraiser. Before starting in the assessor’s office 29 years ago, she worked for a title insurance company and as an escrow officer.
The assessor currently earns $92,364 a year.
The primary function of the assessor’s office is to determine the assessed value (and therefore taxable value) of county properties. The assessor also supervises the GIS department, which maintains mapping data and produces the county’s road atlas.
The assessor’s office has 46 staff members and its budget for 2009-10 is $7.9 million.
The GIS department has 21 employees and a budget of $4.5 million, County Administrator Bill Barron said Thursday.
Seekins said she decided to run because “it’s the right thing for the county. It’s the right thing for the taxpayers.”
Weaver, 64, has worked as a certified public accountant and has served on the Clark County Board of Equalization, where property owners go to contest their assessed value.
Van Nortwick, 43, is a certified general appraiser who has been critical of how property values are calculated.
Seekins said only 1 percent to 2 percent of commercial and residential property owners contest their assessed value. The county has approximately 160,000 parcels, she said.
Doing mass appraisals is different than the one-on-one work done by private appraisers, she said.
“If we didn’t use computers and mass appraisal techniques, it would take an army to do the work,” she said.
The assessor’s office has the county divided into six sections and physical inspections (from the outside) are done of properties from one section each year. So any given home will be looked at once every six years.
If a property owner challenges the assessed value, an appraiser can do an inspection and make an adjustment. If the property owner still isn’t satisfied, there can be an appeal to the Board of Equalization, and an appeal to a state board beyond that.
“All of those layers are there so (property owners) can have their say,” Seekins said.
Seekins said she has completed many professional courses, including those offered by the International Association of Assessing Officers, Washington State Department of Revenue, Washington State Association of Assessors and Portland State University.
Seekins lives in Salmon Creek and has one adult son.
Stephanie Rice: 360-735-4508 or stephanie.rice@columbian.com.
