Democrat Bob “Coach” Henriquez is running for reelection as Hillsborough County’s incumbent Property Appraiser—a role that is responsible for assessing property value for tax purposes. Henriquez has led the office of Hillsborough County’s Property Appraiser since 2012, and intends to continue his goals of promoting equity, fiscal responsibility, and innovative solutions to modernize the office’s operations. Henriquez also intends to assess the effects of COVID-19 on property valuation. We recommend reelecting Bob “Coach” Henriquez for Hillsborough County Property Appraiser.
Property Appraiser (Pinellas): Trevor Mallory
Protests for racial equity have brought to light the unintended ways skin color and systemic racism affects home appraisals. As BN9 pointed out last month, one paper which assesses sales data for 118 million homes in the U.S. over the last 10 years “found that in nearly every state, tax assessments were higher in areas with higher Black and Hispanic populations.” Trevor Mallory, a Democrat who previously ran for St. Petersburg City Council, told the station that if elected he would “put a team together to analyze the facts on the ground.” The Republican incumbent
Mike Twitty told BN9 that he has reviewed the study, is still trying to look at the actual “hard data” that informed it, but also convinced that his agency has never acted unfairly when assessing properties. Twitty has been in office since 2016, but his opponent—who works as a property, renovation and maintenance manager for a company that manages properties in mostly lower income communities in South St. Pete—offers a fresh start and an opportunity to reframe appraisals in the most equitable way possible.
See all of Creative Loafing Tampa Bay’s 2020 recommendations here.
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This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2020.