The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

Carthage, Jasper County

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August 29, 2009

Jasper County assessor to start job

By Susan Redden

sredden@joplinglobe.com

CARTHAGE, Mo. — Connie Alumbaugh Hoover will start work Monday as the new Jasper County assessor, just weeks after a county board finished hearing hundreds of challenges of property values after countywide reassessment.

More training for workers in the assessor’s office is one thing that could help reduce the number of landowner objections to increases in property values, said Hoover, who will be sworn into office in ceremonies at 10 a.m. in the lobby of county courthouse.

She’s had more than a year to think about the office after she won the post in a six-way Republican primary last August. There was no opposition in the general election in November. While most county officials take office Jan. 1, the new term of office for assessors starts Sept. 1 — after property values are set, challenges are made and valuations are determined for school districts, cities and other entities that depend on revenue from property taxes.

After reassessment was completed, values on about 500 properties were challenged before Jasper County’s board of equalization, which wrapped up its work in the first week of August. That compares to fewer than 20 in Newton County, a contrast that Alumbaugh said she noticed.

She said more training in market studies could help the office in meeting reassessment goals — the property revaluing is required by the state every two years and is to set appraised values at within 5 percent of market value.

Counties would be assured of accurate information for reassessment if the state required property sales prices to be provided to assessors, but Missouri is a “nondisclosure” state, Hoover said.

“Jasper County sends out letters to ask for sales numbers, but we don’t get that much information back,” she said.

She said counties have worked out agreements to get the information, and that is something she plans to investigate.

Hoover worked in the assessor’s office from January 2002 to October 2005. She said she worked on the real-estate side, doing market studies, field review work and data entry. She said she also trained on the county’s current mass appraisal computer program, which had been installed not long before she left.

She said she is not as familiar with the side of the assessor’s operation that handles values of personal property such as cars and boats.

“I plan to ‘job shadow’ to learn everybody’s duties,” she said.

But at least some of her first month will be spent in state-required training that will take her out of the office, she said.

“I’ve heard from people who want to come talk to me,” she said. “I don’t want them to think I’m avoiding them.”

Hoover said she is keeping all the current staff in the office, and has asked Lisa Perry to keep the job as chief deputy, a post she currently holds.

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