Republican Runs for County Assessor, Gets Laid Off by Assessor’s Office

(Gerrit Hale campaign) – Gerrit Hale, Republican candidate for Clark County Assessor has hands on experience from working as Deputy Assessor in the County Assessor’s office. Mr. Hale is all too aware of the inadequacies in the system currently used by the Clark County Assessor’s office to assess property taxes.

Thousands of homes and commercial properties are incorrectly assessed every year at an alarmingly increasing rate! This money being spent on processing the increased number of appeals could be better spent on other Clark County’s needs.

Ironically, Gerrit came to work for the County Assessor’s office just last year, and they laid him off last week. The irony is, he was a full-time assessor with top qualifications performing his job very well. Some of the employees in the County Assessor’s office are planning to vote Democrat for Michele Shafe who has worked there longer and “likes the system they currently have in place.” In other words, if elected Michele Shafe does not intend to make any changes to improve the current system. If she has any ideas about that, she has yet to voice them.

County policy mandates that if employees are running for office, they are not to display their signs and stickers in cubicles. When Gerrit won the Republican ticket and Michele won the democrat ticket, an office party was thrown for Michele–in direct violation of county ethics policies. No party for Gerrit. Some employees even displayed their Vote for Michele Shafe signs on their cubicles, against County Ethics policy. Michele Shafe says she has integrity but time and time again openly allows violations of the County’s Ethics policies to proliferate.

So do you see a pattern? New guy Gerrit Hale gets the job of Deputy Assessor in Clark County last year. Hale quickly realizes because of his national level experience at appraising and assessing that their assessment system is terribly flawed and could use a fundamental overhaul.

But that doesn’t fly well with folks like Michele Shafe and the Assessor Mark Schofield himself, who have been there so long and are very comfortable with the current dysfunctional process. At the first opportunity they threw him out despite excellent performance reviews and taxpayers accolades.

Gerrit Hale’s Campaign motto is, “It’s time we do it right!” Hopefully someone is listening besides the Good O’l Boy Network in the County Assessor’s office–like the voters!

Someone is listening since Gerrit Hale received more votes than any other candidate in the June primary including Michele Shafe the Current Assessor’s heir apparent.