Assessor Yandell to seek re-election

Our office has become one of the most respected in the state. We have three employees who have been asked to serve on the State’s Best Practices Committees and I was honored to be elected by my peers to serve on the Board of Directors of the Assessor’s Association for 2012 and 2013.

We have achieved many wonderful things for the taxpayers of Sebastian County. We have brought online assessing and online public records to view. This has helped us to correct many mistakes and many unfair assessments to taxpayers. We changed the way businesses had to fill out assessment forms and made the process much easier for business.

We have a well trained, professional GIS department who help the public with maps, zoning, and many other things. This year we will start applying mapping points to all areas important in search and rescue in case of emergency.

We were able to have an aerial flyover of the entire county that is detailed, showing points of entry and measurements with a computer. We are sharing with and training law enforcement, fire departments and cities in the County to use this software system to better serve the public. We were able to save the county around $300,000.00 each reappraisal cycle by contracting out the appraisal process in real estate while at the same time keeping three of our best appraisers in-house to serve the taxpayers concerns.

We are now able to e-mail your personal property assessments to you, if you choose, allowing us to save more taxpayer dollars. We are scanning all of the old property cards into the system that will attach to the data we have in the computer, giving us more lot sizes and a complete library and sales history of each parcel of land.

For the second time, we will be hosting the Assessors Association’s Summer meeting here that will bring over 200 people to our area the week of June 6th.

Helping people is important to us. Each year we host a toy drive for Foster Children, The Next Step Day Room and have helped collect food for the Back Pack program.

Most importantly, we have made sure that employees understand that we actually work for the taxpayers and each and every person who comes or calls our office is to be listened to and treated with respect.

I am a member of the Arkansas Assessor’s Association, and serve on the Board of Directors, the International Association of Assessing Officers, a board member of the Area Agency on Aging, and a member of Christ the King Catholic Church. I am a past president of the Fort Smith Board of Realtors and was a real estate broker for over 20 years. I have been married to my high school sweetheart, Harold, for 49 years and we have three daughters and lots of grandchildren.