Commission, assessor agree on plan to aid office

Resolving a couple weeks of sometimes bitter debate, Wahkiakum County Assessor Bill Coons and Commissioners Lisa Marsyla, Dan Cothren and Blair Brady came up with a plan Tuesday to help Coons deal with a backlong that threatens to bring his office to a standstill.

Coons, who took office this year, has been dealing with appeals of last year's assessments, errors on tax statements and the implementation of a new computer program for office records and functions.

In February, he discovered that assessment errors identified but not corrected before he took office had occurred on tax statements. He notified commissioners of the problem and hired a temporary clerk using the Professional Fees line in the department budget.

Commissioners were unhappy with the hiring, saying they had instituted a policy prohibiting department heads from hiring personnel without their approval and that they had enforced that policy on former Assessor Sulema Zerr. They requested a meeting with Coons, who had been at trainings during the previous two weeks.

After 90 minutes of discussion Tuesday, Coons agreed to adopt some cost saving measures which the board suggested, and the commissioners agreed to support Coon's proposal to re-organize his office staff.

The office will close to the public one day a week, Wednesdays, starting next week to allow staff to work uninterrupted. The board also encouraged Coons to have his existing clerk work overtime, which is already funded in his budget.

Commissioners agreed to support Coons's proposal to reduce the existing full-time appraiser position to halftime and hire another clerk for the office. Last year, Coons enrolled in training to become a certified appraiser, and he would handle that task, contracting for assistance if needed.

Coons said he had already notified his appraiser of the potential reduction of the position from full to part time.

The position is covered in the county's contract with the county workers' union, and Coons and Commissioner Blair Brady planned to meet this week to begin the process to re-open the contract with the union.

Commissioner Lisa Marsyla said the move would increase the office's staff from 3 to 3.5 full time equivalent (FTE) persons, and the cost might be an additional $25,000.

Despite the potential cost increase, she supported the proposal.

"We can't let this office fail," she said.

Coons covered a table in the commissioners' meeting room with stacks of files and records demanding the staff's attention.

"This is work that has accumulated from my predecessor that is demanding additional resources to deal with it," he said.

"This is very personal," said Deputy Clerk Marsha Souvenir. "We work for the public. It's getting harder and harder to apologize for the work that's not getting addressed.

"I know money is an issue, but we have a job to do, and it's just impossible to do it."

She said the problem became worse when the commissioners reduced funding for departments because of a revenue shortfall, and her position was cut to part time.

Pat Dennis, a former assessor and appraiser in Wahkiakum and Cowlitz counties and current member of the Wahkiakum County Board of Equalization, supported Coons and Souvenir.

"When I worked in the assessor's office in the 1970's, we had four or five appeals a year," he said. "Now, there were 170 appeals to the Board of Equalization last year. Bill has inherited a real rats nest. It's driving us crazy with assessments that are so far off.

"He needs help."

Commissioners Marsyla and Dan Cothren acknowledged that the assessor's department has problems, but they criticized his handling of the situation.

"Bill, you're your own worst enemy," Cothren said. He recounted that Coons had acted because of concerns, but the concerns were addressed. He left a 12-page analysis of employee tasks and time demands that was incomprehensible and just "jibberish," on the commissioners' desks, and he'd written a letter to the editor about the situation.

"That pissed me off," Cothren said. "People aren't happy. Promises were made and things didn't happen.

"I'm here to work with you because it affects everybody. There's concerned citizens who feel this could be done a different way."

"My frustration is that without discussing this with the board, you said you'd hired somebody," Marsyla said. "If you had approached us with this in the beginning, we could have avoided this situation."

Coons apologized for his handling of the situation.

"I recognize that in my panic--I was absolutely freaked out that incorrect statement were going out--I opted for action," he said. "I opted for action. I did so in a way that caused us to put personalities before the taxpayer.

"I apologize for that."