Roughly six months into his tenure, Ala-mance County’s tax administrator contends that he’s already getting more value out of the county’s tax office – which, in the future, he hopes may even be able to reclaim some of the duties that are presently farmed out to a revaluation contractor.
Brad Fowler, who took over the county’s tax office at the beginning of May, conceded that, at this point, the firm Vincent Valuation is on the hook to conduct the entirety of the next countywide revaluation, which is scheduled to take effect in the opening months of 2027.
Yet, in a presentation to the county’s board of commissioners on Monday, Fowler argued that he has overseen staffing and training initiatives which will enable the county’s own in-house appraisers to handle certain aspects of future mass reappraisals.
“I think, right now, we do not have the expertise to do the commercial piece,” he went on to inform the county’s governing board during this briefing. “But for the residential piece, I can absolutely see us bringing it back in-house and saving a lot of money.”
The county’s current relationship with Vincent Valuation was originally forged under Fowler’s predecessor Jeremy Akins, who had enlisted this contractor’s help with commercial appraisals and revaluation appeals prior to the county’s latest revaluation in 2023. Such was his delight with the company’s work that Akins subsequently advised the commissioners to have Vincent handle the entire revaluation in 2027 – and, moreover, to carry out a “full list and measure” ahead of the reval in order to update the 30-year-old data that has served as the basis for the county’s assessments of property values.
Akins had pitched this plan for a fully-contracted reval shortly before he gave up his post in the summer of 2024 after two of his subordinates were caught manipulating tax values to benefit themselves or their relatives. Although the commissioners initially balked at the $2.6 million price tag that Akins had quoted for Vincent’s services, they ultimately signed off on the contract shortly after the former tax administrator’s departure.
The board’s decision to contract with Vincent was already a fait accompli when Fowler was tapped to take over the county’s tax office in the spring of this year. During his presentation on Monday, Fowler assured the commissioners that Vincent has already made significant progress on the “full list and review” that it has been hired to undertake ahead of the next reval.
“There is no valuation taking place right now,” he went on to add. “It is simply getting the records as accurate as possible, and as of this morning, they’ve completed 37,000 parcels…out of [a total of] 78,000 and some change.”
The county’s tax administrator told the commissioners that he and his staff haven’t exactly been idle amidst this flurry of activity on the part of the contractor.
Fowler reminded the commissioners that, since his arrival, the tax office has posted its best-ever collection rate of 99.21 percent. He went on to boast that the tax office has managed to fill all but one of the vacancies that, at the start of his tenure, had comprised 26 percent of its posts.
Fowler’s insistence on filling all of his agency’s openings drew some pushback from commissioner Ed Priola, who has previously argued that the tax office can shed some of these posts now that Vincent has taken over the prep work for the next revaluation.
Fowler nevertheless assured Priola that the tax office still needs a complement of in-house appraisers to assess newly-built and renovated facilities. He added that being at full capacity will also put his staff in a position to take over some of the work that Vincent is presently doing on the county’s behalf. He noted that, in the future, he hopes to have his staff trained to do the same sort of data collection that Vincent’s employees are presently engaged in.
“Once Vincent and his team moves out from this revaluation, our teams will be doing that canvassing,” he added. “We’re going to make sure we do one eighth of the county every year…and that eliminates the vast majority of what that contract is comprised of.”
Fowler also alluded to some training initiatives that he has implemented to expand the capabilities of the tax office’s staff. These educational endeavors received vote of confidence from Henry Vines, a one-time commissioner candidate who now serves on the county’s board of equalization and review, which is responsible for hearing revaluation appeals.
“We may not have had as much knowledge as we should have on the last reval,” Vines went on to admit during a public comment period that preceded Fowler’s presentation. “Brad has been a breath of fresh air to the board, and he has taken under advisement some of the changes that we want to see.”
Fowler’s focus on training also received high marks from county commissioner Kelly Allen.
“One thing that I liked when we hired you,” Allen told the tax administrator after his briefing, “is that you can actually train our staff to go out and do certified revaluations.”
