The way I read this announcement is Akers plans to take a leave now, while everybody is watching, then in a few months down the road when he thinks nobody’s watching, he’s going to resume his old job so he can be a double dipper–pulling down a six-figure salary between his two public jobs.

An assessor has absolutely nothing (by design) in deciding which taxing entity will receive what taxes. Each taxing entity issues a “levy” (a fixed dollar amount) for its needs, The Treasurer adds up all the different levies to get a grand total. The assessor merely provides a number for each taxpayer for the Treasurer to use in divvying up the responsibility of paying that grand levy.

An assessor cannot ‘feed’ taxes to one taxing entity or another. At worst, he can go light or hard on the proportionate share each taxpayer bears.

Having worked in both the Center Township Assessors Office (and being a certified assessor/appraiser) and also working as the Township Clerk working up the township budgets, I was astounded at your misinformed hue-and-cry about the miraculous powers of an assessor to favor one taxing entity over another. Simply can’t happen! By design since since 1851 !

Wilson, that’s not the point! Let me try this again. Ackers is employed by the school district. The district gets its money from property taxes. What you pay is based on the assessed value of your home. Ackers is now the township assessor. Make the connection and see how someone could view this as a conflict of interest. It’s not hard.

Addul, surely you are not going to allow Wilson, the idiot to dominate your blog like he has on all of the others with his biased one-sided opinions, and attacks against anyone who does not support democrat officeholders.

Abdul said: “A taxing body that could potentially lose money based his assessments of Center Township Property.” The taxing units request a fixed amount (the levy) that they get no matter what figures the assessor provides. The assessor has nothing whatsoever to do with establishing the levy. The levy is collected by the treasurer from the totality of the taxpayers. The assessor’s only role is to provide the proportionality amongst the various taxpayers. The taxing units get their requested fixed amount (the levy) no matter what the assessor does.

This has been the system in Indiana since 1851 – this is the first time I’ve ever heard of this bogus claim than an assessor can favor a taxing unit – the usual question is whether the assessor favors or penalizes individual taxpayers. Like I said earlier: I’m a state-certified assessor – I do know the process…