Citizens urged to research candidates

To The Eagle:

I wanted to take a few minutes to address the concerns that Mr. Watts has expressed.The first item of concern is the stated $100,000 salary, just under $68,000 is the actual salary paid by our county.

The second item of concern is that the county will have to hire a substitute Accredited Appraiser. This need not be a concern, since Mr. Dahle who works in the assessors office is accredited by the Department Of Revenue. As a matter of point, The DOR reports that, as of the 31st of August 2018, Mr. Dahle is the only Accredited Appraiser working for Wahkiakum County and has been the only Accredited Appraiser working for our county since April 30th of 2016. I am sorry to be the one to inform you, but Bill Coons has not been Accredited for over two years. For anyone except a DOR Accredited Appraiser to be certifying an appraisal for the purposes of taxation would be in violation of state law and could bring into question the validity of any property taxes levied using said appraisal, as well as opening our county up to possible litigation.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to address these concerns, I appreciate your concern for this county and would urge all citizens to research the candidates to ensure that they possess all of the Accreditation, Licenses, Certifications they are trying to make us believe they have.

Thank you for the opportunity to address your concerns.

Brian McClain

Skamokawa