Mick Ireland the man to run Assessor’s Office

In two weeks, Pitkin County will elect a new assessor. One candidate, Deb Bamesberger, has worked in the Assessor’s Office on personal property for six years. The other candidate, Mick Ireland, has worked as an attorney representing citizens who want to appeal their assessed real property valuation and as a hearing officer to advise the county commissioners on the merits of other citizen assessment appeals for more than 10 years. Ireland also served as mayor of Aspen and as a Pitkin County commissioner.

Bamesberger may work in the Assessor’s Office but she just doesn’t seem qualified to run it. When I asked her about what the Assessor’s Office could do better, all she could think of was good customer service and being polite to the customer. While important, these seem like very minimalist objectives. When I asked her about the inadequate software used by the office, all she could talk about was a new 3D feature that a vendor was offering. Significantly, the issues page on her campaign website (https://www.debforassessor.com/issues) is blank, but the picture page is full of family pictures.

Ireland’s endorsements on LinkedIn for skills related to running the Assessor’s Office are numerous. His experience representing citizens unhappy with their assessments would bring a valuable perspective to the office. Ireland has experience creating, presenting and living by budgets. He has experience managing people. His experience with software used for analyzing assessments and get-out-the-vote campaigns is much more extensive than the average Microsoft Office user. His website talks about what he thinks could be improved at the Assessor’s Office and what he has done. The Assessor’s Office needs to move forward and to become more transparent. Ireland can make that happen. If you disagree, you should watch the Squirm Night video of Bamesberger and Ireland here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czBTxbVwzkY starting at the 36-minute mark.

Tom Robinson

Redstone