Liebler says she can bring leadership to county office

By Dan MacArthur
North Forty News

Barbara Liebler insists that she's running for assessor only because she can't tolerate Larimer County constantly leading the state in property assessment appeals.

In reviewing state statistics, she said Larimer was the only county posting protests in five figures. "My gripe is truly the numbers," she said.

Liebler said reducing those numbers can be accomplished through the leadership she would bring to the office - along with her management skills and broad-based experience in land-use planning and economic development. She said the assessor needs to be more of a chief executive officer than the technician that she contends her Republican opponent seems to be.

"He's a detail man," Liebler said. "He wrote the model himself. I think that's a bad idea; he's acting as an employee rather than the employer."

While she is a "numbers person" who understands the math behind the assessment models, Liebler said she doesn't want or need to perform the calculations. "Any CEO has to understand the technicalities of the business, but you don't do them," she said.

That's the role of the capable and competent staff, she said. And the only addition that staff needs is a statistician to further refine the assessment model. Liebler believes someone in-house could be trained for that work, or hired with the savings resulting from canceling the $156,000 consultant's contract.

Liebler said her goal is making the assessor's office more accurate, approachable and accountable, without the finger-pointing that marked the Republican primary.

Toward that end, she pledges to better refine the definition of neighborhoods so they are more compact and better reflect the values of properties within them, rather than being distorted by distant, dissimilar properties.

Liebler said she also would review the assessment numbers a month or two before notices of valuation are mailed. Properties posting abnormal declines or increases would be scrutinized to assess their accuracy, so any errors could be corrected early. Any missing or incorrect information would be entered quickly into the database to continually refine and update the factors used to determine property values.

A Larimer County resident since 1972, Liebler, 62, was the founder and chief executive officer of Colorado Case Corp., a manufacturer of musical instrument cases, from 1993 to 2004. From 1987 to 1994, she worked as an editor, book coordinator and advertising sales person at Interweave Press. In 1983, she founded Textile Studios, which produced woven artwork for corporate and public spaces, and served as its CEO until 1987.

Now retired, Liebler has lived in both Loveland and Fort Collins and currently resides in the latter. She has been active in civic affairs in both cities, serving on the city council in each. In Fort Collins she served on the Downtown Development Authority and chaired that city's Economic Opportunity Commission. In Loveland Liebler chaired its land-use planning process and served as vice chair of the planning commission.

She earned her undergraduate degree at Michigan State University.