by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
To be such a likable guy, it’s a real shame that Jim Overton is the most hated man in Duval County for two months out of the year.
But as the county’s property appraiser, Overton really doesn’t have a say in the matter. He is just doing his job.
During August and September, Overton’s office sends out Notices of Proposed Property Taxes to every property owner in Jacksonville. The notices outline how the proposed taxes are broken down according to the value of a person’s property. Shortly after the notices are received, Overton’s name is ostensively cursed in unison all across the county.
Luckily for Overton, we are now in November, the month when tax bills are sent out and taxpayers’ anger issues are transferred to Mike Hogan, Duval County’s tax collector.
For Overton, who is more than halfway through his first four-year term, being the county’s property appraiser couldn’t be a better job, even with the tough two months.
“It’s going well,” he said. “The people that work here have an astounding amount of knowledge about what we do. I have been very impressed with the level and depth of the knowledge that exists within this organization.”
Since taking the head appraiser’s seat, Overton has made a few changes within the department but he says his biggest accomplishment so far has been the implementation of a new computer system that should change the way his department works.
“We are in the midst of a computer conversion to our new Computer Augmented Mass Appraisal System,” he said. “We bought it from a vendor in Orlando and it is the same system that Tampa has and Miami bought it after Jacksonville. Right now, it is up and it is balancing. I expect that we will go live on it in about another week. From a workplace standpoint, it is going to increase our processing strategy.”
Overton said while the new system will help the property appraiser’s office work more efficiently, it will also help the public by pointing out property value abnormalities in the neighborhoods.
“It is a relational database as opposed to being a flat file so we will be able to do a lot more analysis of data,” he said. “For the public what it will do is it will improve the equity of the tax roll. It will allow us not to have anomalies in our data base so we won’t have one house that stands out in the neighborhood that is over-assessed or under-assessed. It will tend to even it out. It will allow us to see what is going on in the data so that we can find the places where the taxation is not being plotted equitably.”
Though getting a new software system might not sound like a big deal to some, Overton said he is quite proud of the recent acquisition because it took a lot of effort, red tape and heartburn.
“The biggest hurdle I have been over as property appraiser is getting that purchase made,” he said. “It is a very specialized piece of software and to go through the standard procurement process of the city was difficult and then to get the contract negotiated with a vendor who was simultaneously suing us for breach on the last contract. It was a very dicey situation and we got through it, we got a new contract, we saved money and the implementation is going into place.”
Though Overton now sits in one of the most important elected positions in Jacksonville, this isn’t his first time in the spotlight of public leadership. He came to the position after fulfilling a term representing Dist. 14 on the City Council and is the former chairman of the Downtown Revitalization Task Force.
Though he reported during his first days in his appraiser position that he was glad to be out of City Council, Overton now admits that he misses some of the action he was a part of at City Hall.
“I miss parts of it,” he said. “I miss being a part of the debate, whatever the debate is. With a town the size of Jacksonville you are going to have something major going on all the time and I miss having input.”
Overton was also once a preliminary name in the mayoral race that current mayor John Peyton eventually won but he said his current position keeps him busy enough to make the idea of running for mayor in the next race a nonexistent goal.
“The next mayor’s race as far as I am concerned is 2011,” he said. “It’s a long way away and I love this job. I love the technical part of it and I like the management and organizational part of it and I am real happy doing what I am doing. You never say never in this business but I don’t anticipate running for mayor.”
What he does anticipate is continuing to streamline the Property Appraiser’s office and make it as beneficial and accessible to the public as possible. Overton said besides getting the new computer system up and running, what he mainly wants to do is create public trust.
“My big over-reaching goal for the organization is to create public trust,” he said. “What we try to do is we try to make it easy for the public to find us, talk to us, look at our data and understand what we are doing. We try to inject transparency into our process and of course we are trying to be cordial and professional at the same time.”