Liebler says assessment system 'clearly wrong'

By Cherry Sokoloski
North Forty News

Barbara Liebler, the Democratic candidate for Larimer County assessor, would like to bring property assessments more in line with real values.

"The system is clearly wrong, and I feel I can fix the problem," she said.

Liebler, 62, of Fort Collins, does not have formal training in assessment or appraisal but has studied the methodology with mentors. "I'm a big-picture problem solver," Liebler said, adding that she understands what creates value in property. She noted that the assessor's office has about 50 professional assessors, providing plenty of technical expertise.

Liebler has a business background as CEO of Colorado Case Corp. for 11 years. She has also served on numerous economic and planning advisory groups in Larimer County. Liebler was elected to the Fort Collins City Council in the 1980s and to the Loveland City Council in the 1990s.

Liebler does not have an opponent from the Democratic Party, so her name will be on the November ballot.

In the last three assessment periods, Liebler said, Larimer County had the highest number of assessment protests in Colorado. By the numbers, there were about 13,000 protests in 2001, 17,000 in 2003 and 15,000 in 2005. Liebler said an acceptable number of protests would be about 4,000.

Liebler does not believe the computer system now in use in the assessor's office is the culprit, since Weld County uses the same program but had only 4,900 protests in 2005.

Liebler said the high number of protests indicates that the county is coming up with wrong property values. If elected, she would hire a statistical analyst to look at the computer modeling used. "Other counties our size have them," she noted.

In addition, Liebler would put effort into filling in missing data about property in the county, data that could influence assessed values. She would also look at how various neighborhoods are defined so that values would reflect the desirability of the location. Finally, she would ask the staff to flag big changes in value, so those properties could be looked at more closely.

"I really believe in open and responsible government," Liebler said, but she is not convinced that having a citizen oversight committee is the way to achieve that goal. "I'd like to have a citizen suggestion box, in paper and on our web site," she said. "I really want to encourage citizen input and ideas."