Published: September 27, 2008 06:05 pm         

FLASHPOINT: Voters must resist eliminating Harrison Township assessor

As important as the presidential election process is for our country, on election day this year, Terre Haute residents will have the opportunity to vote on something almost as important to us financially. Public Question No. 1 asks the voters, “Do you think the duties of the township assessor should be transferred to the county assessor? If your answer is “yes”, thanks to Indianapolis politicians, your home assessment may end up being handled by assessors from Indianapolis or somewhere else in the state.

In fact, currently, we have private assessors from Ohio assessing properties in our community due to the overloaded county assessor’s office. If your answer is “no”, the assessment of our property will continue to be handled by the Harrison Township assessor. Ironically, both Republican leaders and Democrat leaders oppose the move to transfer the assessment to the county level and beyond.

Then who is actually for this, you must wonder? Business leaders, including our local Chamber of Commerce. In fact, the Terre Haute Chamber of Commerce is actively pursuing donors who are willing to put up advertising dollars to encourage you, the voters, to vote ”yes”. But don’t be fooled. If this was good for us, we wouldn’t need big business to push this down our throats.

The Public Question is purposely vague and misleading. You might naturally think that a vote of “yes” means we will have one assessor handling the values of the 50,000-plus parcels of property in our county, but the opposite is true. If you vote “yes”, you will find that the assessing duties will by necessity be farmed out to people all over the state and beyond at a cost of nearly three times what the current budget of the assessor’s office requires to operate.

If this doesn’t save money and we lose our local officials to work with, you must be wondering why anyone in their right mind would ever consider doing this?

The clear answer is that big business wants to move the real estate taxes from the manufacturing plants to the homeowners. Local assessors have been reluctant to do this but assessors from out of state will have no problem telling John Smith his taxes are going to triple while telling General Motors their taxes are going to go down.

Don’t be fooled on election day. This must be approved by the voters and you must vote “no” to Public Question No. 1 to stop it. The question will appear at the end of your ballot. It will be the last thing you are asked to vote on. There will be several questions about retaining judges and then, out of nowhere, our very first Public Question.

When asked, “Should the assessor duties of your township assessor be transferred to the county assessor?”, for the sake of your own finances in this troubled economy, be sure to answer “no”.

Don’t be fooled if you’re a renter into believing that you aren’t affected by this Public Question. As a landlord, I can assure you that if our property taxes go up, so will the price of our rents. So, those of you who rent will be affected just like the rest of us.

Educate yourselves about Public Question No. 1 and after doing so, vote “no”! Only those of you who vote in Harrison Township (most of the City of Terre Haute) will have the opportunity to stop this.

Don’t miss this opportunity to vote “no."

— Mike Ellis

Terre Haute