County assessor: Coons challenges Zerr

Puget Island resident Bill Coons is running to be Wahkiakum County’s new assessor.

Coons said people around the county started encouraging him to run for the assessor’s position early on and he feels his background in selling real-estate in Wahkiakum County makes him the best qualified candidate.

“The first step was that I was appointed to the board of equalization,” said Coons.

While on the equalization board Coons said he began to learn about the ins-and-outs of Washington’s property tax system. He said he thought the assessor’s job looked like something he’d be good at.

“I also realized that it was something I’d like to do,” said Coons.

Coons said he had another reason to run as well.

“I’ve been frustrated at seeing property assessments going up while property sales go down.”

He was also saddened by the last round of county assessment when people started complaining bitterly about their property tax assessments.

Coons said that as a real estate agent he’s seen resentment grow in the county over increased property taxes. He said people, after receiving their property tax assessments, would walk into his office, slam their assessment on his desk and say ‘If you can sell my property for that – do it.’

Coons said he understood the property owner’s frustration with the tax appeals process too. He went through the appeals process and lost his case. The whole process of taxation, and appealing the verdict afterwards is, “...so arcane,” said Coons, “I just thought perhaps I could do something to help.”

Coons said his experience during his tax hearing taught him that the property tax appeals process is unfair.

“The deck is stacked against the taxpayer.”

His experience with property valuation set him on a new path. He said he wanted to learn how the state determines the value of a piece of property and how tax assessment decisions are made. “I thought I could do something so I went back to school and took the International Association of Assessing Officers class.”

He said that backed by four years of real-estate sales and his IAAO certificate he is now qualified to be the county’s new tax assessor.

Coons sees his biggest challenge as the county’s new assessor as establishing “fair” market value on any given property.

“I don’t know how anyone can be an assessor with out knowing the value of a property. It’s the assessor that makes the final decision on any piece of property.”

Coons said based on the state’s own standards of taxation he thinks the property owners in Wahkiakum are being over taxed on average 22 percent, “…that’s unconscionable.”

The current assessor has mistakenly created excessive land values, and he sees a real potential for lowering land values in Wahkiakum County. He said the assessor’s office is charged with determining the “fair market value,” or the value between a willing seller and buyer.

“That doesn’t mean what’s it worth when a Californian with lots of money comes and buys,” he said.

He also said the state has a computer program that makes it pretty clear on the dollar value of a structure, but often the current assessor doesn’t subtract the structure value from the land value to come up with a “…fair market value,” said Coons.

Coons said if elected he would also like to move the county to an annual evaluation program. Property in Wahkiakum is currently evaluated every four years. He said the move would make it easier to adjust property values and to straighten out Wahkiakum’s land registration.

He said there is a lot of land sold in the county, but many sales aren’t registered.

“Think of it as a slice of cheese. Many people will slice off a piece of their land and then not record the sale so it doesn’t show up in the assessor’s office, which makes it even harder to determine real land values.”

Coons received his real estate license in 2006 and his Brokers License in 2009. He is now associate managing broker at Lower Columbia Realty in Cathlamet.

He is originally from Marin County, Calif., and attended the University of California Berkeley. His studies included electrical engineering and computer science. Early in his career he worked in the oil fields of the Gulf of Mexico conducting physical and seismic surveys.

Coons said after his stint in the Gulf he returned to Berkeley and finished his degree. “It was an adventure,” said Coons.

After university, he worked for IBM, Stratacomm and Cisco Systems. He was a project manager in customer support for three separate divisions within Cisco.

Coons moved to Wahkiakum County in 1993 and telecommuted for a year before he retired.

“For awhile I thought I could retire but I had to do something, so I went into real estate."