A pair of familiar faces are running to classify and assess properties across Arapahoe County this year.
Democratic businessman PK Kaiser is taking on incumbent Republican Marc Scott for the post of Arapahoe County assessor.
The county assessor is principally charged with finding, listing, valuing and classifying properties across the jurisdiction. The assessor is also tasked with sizing up damage after large storms, and maintaining current and former property records and maps for the county.
There are currently about 220,000 taxable properties that must be regularly assessed in Arapahoe County, as well as thousands more non-taxable properties that also much be looked at, including government buildings, schools and churches, according to Scott.
The total taxable value of property in Arapahoe County was about $93 billion last year, and will likely swell to more than $100 billion in 2019, Scott said.
“If we’re 10 percent off, we’re charging people for taxes they don’t owe, and if we’re 10 percent low, schools and other services are underfunded,” he said.
About 8,000 property values, or roughly 3.6 percent of the total, were appealed to the assessor’s office in 2017, Scott said. He said his office corrects about 50 percent of the appeals that come through, while the remaining roughly 1 percent continue to the state and county appellate levels.
“We satisfied 99 percent of taxpayers in the county,” Scott said. “I wouldn’t want it to be zero because then, obviously ,the values are too low, and if we’re getting 10-20 percent of people appealing, you’re being way too aggressive and not really understanding the market. But 3.6 percent I think in 2017 was a good number — we were very satisfied with that.”
Scott’s office of 63 employees deals with an annual budget of about $5.5 million, he said.
“We’ve operated as fiscally responsible as we can, and we take it seriously that were taking taxpayer dollars,” he said. “We don’t waste them.”
MARC SCOTT
Republican Marc Scott was appointed to the assessor’s seat by the Arapahoe County Board of County Commissioners in January 2017, following the retirement of longtime Assessor Corbin Sakdol. Prior to being appointed, Scott was the chief deputy assessor for four years, and the senior commercial appraiser for the county for three years. He has more than 30 years of commercial appraisal experiencePK KAISER
Democratic businessman PK Kaiser has been a perennial candidate in Aurora, most recently running unsuccessful campaigns for a seat on Aurora City Council in 2015, and again for County Assessor in 2014. He has run several other campaigns for seats on city council and at the State Capitol in the past. Kaiser, who holds multiple degrees in economics and an MBA, said he is a Realtor, a real estate broker and a real estate specialist for the United States Postal Service.
Scott was appointed to the assessor’s seat by the Arapahoe County Board of County Commissioners in January 2017, following the retirement of longtime Assessor Corbin Sakdol. Prior to being appointed, Scott was the chief deputy assessor for four years, and the senior commercial appraiser for the county for three years. He has more than 30 years of commercial appraisal experience, he said.
Kaiser has been a perennial candidate in Aurora, most recently running unsuccessful campaigns for a seat on Aurora city council in 2015, and again for county assessor in 2014. He has run several other campaigns for seats on city council and at the State Capitol in the past. Kaiser, who holds multiple degrees in economics and an MBA, is a Realtor, a real estate broker and a real estate specialist for the United States Postal Service, he said.
Kaiser said he’s running for assessor in an effort to make the office more transparent.
“The assessor’s office is not transparent, it’s not accountable and this office and this position has been hidden from the public eye for more than 100 years,” he said. “Many of these people are coming through appointees. This office should be more transparent, should be more visible and more open to the public.”
Kaiser is about $1,400 in debt for his campaign expenses, despite loaning himself about $3,000 in June, according to campaign finance filings. The bulk of Kaiser’s loan went toward paying outstanding expenses from past campaigns.