Meet the Butte County assessor candidates: Michael Howard
Michael Howard wants to make some changes to the Butte County Assessor’s Office by way of upgrading its technology.
The assessor candidate and Paradise resident expressed his concern for the office’s high turnover rate as well as how its functionality might affect taxpayers.
“I see the glacial rate at which things change in that office or in that environment,” Howard said. “Essentially, the tech that is utilized there is so obsolete that it places a tremendous burden on the staff and also is not a very efficient or effective use of taxpayer dollars.”
Howard said he believes part of the high turnover rate stems from outdated technology hindering the work experience for newcomers.
“The new hires, they don’t stay very long because they walk in here and they look around and they think it’s ‘The Flintstones’ or something and they’re gone,” Howard said.
Technology isn’t the only thing
Howard would change about the office. He said if he wins, he hopes to reorganize the management dynamic to improve efficiency. He said he anticipates that the current union, which is the Teamsters, would be in favor of this move.
“It is going to create a chain of command that can be moved up in a more reasonable fashion,” Howard said. “Where right now there is one supervisor, my plan is to replace that supervisor with five team leaders. I think the union would like that idea because right now, with one team
leader, that’s a little bottom heavy and a little thin at the top. And so reconfiguring in that fashion is going to, I think, look good to the Teamsters.”
Lastly, Howard said he hopes to improve relationships between the Assessor’s Office and other county departments. He added that he sees some division between the office and the rest of the county including the Board of Supervisors.
“Why that is, I’m not really interested in but I want to find some common ground, some middle ground, between admin and have a friendlier relationship with the Board
of Supervisors. A department head shouldn’t be thought of poorly by his or her peers.”
In terms of experience, Howard began his appraisal career in the private and corporate sectors in 1990. After the housing market collapse in 2007, he began working at the Butte County Assessor’s Office where he worked for 12 years.
“I resigned from my position and went back to the private sector in 2020,” Howard said. “From a semi-retirement level, I continue to do appraisals now exclusively for military veterans.”
Howard is running for Butte County assessor against Alyssa Douglass and Randall Stone. The election is scheduled for the June 7 ballot.