As a 21-year-old student, it might be easy for my elders to assume that I don’t pay much attention to politics. Most people my age don’t vote in even the presidential election, let alone local races. And as someone who is not originally from Chattanooga, it might also be easy to assume that I am less invested in this city. But all of that could be further from the truth. This election matters to me. And that’s why I’m voting for Mark Siedlecki—the only candidate I trust to run a fair, efficient assessor’s office.
I am particularly invested in this election because I know from first-hand experience how important it is to have a fair, transparent assessing process. Back in 2008, right as the economy began to crash, the home that my parents built together was assessed by the assessor’s office in Alachua County, Fla., where I am from. The assessor’s office of Alachua County raised our property taxes by $2,000 that year. When my father tried to appeal the decision, the process proved impossible to navigate: he received a summons to a meeting with the assessor’s office the day before the hearing, even though Florida state law required a 60-day notice. Because he had to work, he could not be there to appeal, and he lost. And because we had no money due to the cost of paying our property taxes to keep our home, we could not challenge the office on their failure to notify my father of his summons in a timely manner.
The cost of an unfair assessing system put an undue burden on our family: in order to keep the home my parents had built by hand, my parents had to search for better-paying work. There was no work in Gainesville, the town closest to us, as my aging parents competed with graduates from the University of Florida who were better-educated and younger. They opted to temporarily move to Tennessee because of job opportunities here, but as the recession grew worse, the jobs that drew them to Tennessee dried up. We ended up living in a truck, a tour bus, a trailer, and a warehouse as my parents struggled to put food on the table—meanwhile, the house we were fighting for sat empty 900 miles away.
We struggled for six years, up until I moved to Chattanooga for college, before my parents finally returned to Florida, where work opportunities were beginning to open up again. And even though I was 12 when we moved to Tennessee, I remember the truck, tour bus, Airstream, and warehouse better than I remember that house my parents built with their own hands. That house, to me, is nothing more than a dream; I have not seen it in years.
Six years of struggle because of the mix of poor economic conditions and first-hand experience with an unfair assessing process is why I care about the assessor of property race in the first place I’ve ever chosen to live, Chattanooga. I know better than most people how an unfair assessment and a rigged appeals system can hurt real people in irrevocable ways. And while Hamilton County might not be the same as Alachua County, the ingredients to run a fair assessor’s office are the same. Most notably, the candidate has to care about other people more than themselves. And as I’ve watched the rhetoric of this election unfold, I’ve only seen one candidate talk about the people he’ll serve instead of only his “values”: Mark Siedlecki.
While his opponent espouses his Republican affiliation as a crutch to woo voters in a traditionally red county, Mark is talking to real people about issues that don’t adhere to a party line. Mark’s values, expressed through his advocacy for a tax freeze that his opponent has refused to enact, show that he will run an assessor’s office that puts people first.
I urge everyone reading this to cast your vote for Mark Siedlecki either this week during early voting or on election day, Aug. 4. Your vote can make a difference for real people. See y’all at the polls.
Heather Murray
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Ms. Murray,
Your family’s story is truly sad. I’d encourage you to write your home county about the elected Democrat Assessor of Property Ed Crapo who seems, according to your account, ignore state law.
Thank you for making the exact point about the assessor’s office. It doesn’t need to be operated by a Democratic political activist in Hamilton County, so go vote for Marty Haynes.
Ben Porter
Chattanooga native