Assessor seeks re-election

Four years ago, Sulema Zerr took on incumbent Assessor Lucille Nielsen in the general election and won.

Now the incumbent with four years in office, she is facing a challenger in Bill Coons.

The first term has been challenging at times as taxpayers and county government have had to deal with a faltering economy, and she's had to accept budget cuts while trying to implement new programs.

"I love it," she said in an interview this week. "Everyday is a new experience. I feel I'm competitive enough that I started a job and I need to finish."

Zerr has been working to implement a new computer program that will put the county on annual assessments, not the traditional every four years.

Assessments are based on real estate market activity, and when the value of property was increasing every year, taxpayers faced hefty hikes when their turn came for a revaluation.

Annual adjustments should take the jolts out of the process, she said, and they'll allow assessments to react quicker to the market when it declines.

Zerr obtained state grant funding that is financing implementation of the new program. The switch isn't required until 2014, she said, but she wanted to move the county into the annual revaluations. She, her appraiser and the deputy clerk are still learning how the new program works.

"It's a challenge," she said. "I've been here four years, and it takes everything I have to get through a day. The whole thing is new. There aren't enough hours in the day."

Zerr said she came into office wanting to find ways to lower assessments or keep them from rising quickly but found that state laws tie an assessor's hands.

"The only people who can lower taxes are those elected to the state legislature," she said.

Valuations have to be based on sales, she said.

"The Department of Revenue sets the guidelines; there nothing we can do about it," she said.

"What we can do is to manage the department as best we can. I go as far as I can go without breaking the law."

When Zerr was elected, the appraiser, following DOR recommendations, was using trends based on market sales to adjust assessments.

"We stopped the trending process that he was doing," she said. "It was carried too far, I think. That's what I mean about bending as much as I can."

Zerr was born and raised in Texas. She was trained as a medical assistant but began working in a securities firm when she moved to the Pacific Northwest. She developed an interest in investing and became a securities exchange broker. When she married Phil Zerr, she became the business manager for his logging and development enterprises and also worked in a title company. They purchased farmland in the Grays River Valley and moved there in the 1990's.