Yazoo County Tax Assessor Denise Robertson’s request to purchase two new vehicles for her office died for a lack of motion during the recent county board meeting.
The tax assessor’s office currently has a 2016 Ford F-150 for the appraiser within the office to travel over various types of properties. Robertson said the truck is “too big.”
The tax assessor’s office has always had a pick-up truck for the appraiser to use during travel. The actual tax assessor has rarely used the vehicle in past administrations because it was the job of the tax appraiser to visit various properties.
However, Robertson provided quotes to the county board to purchase two SUVs, one for the appraiser to use and the other for her own usage.
“With us having the largest land mass county, with all these hills and gullies, the truck we have right now is just not working for the tax assessor’s office,” Robertson said. “(Appraiser) Bill (Odom) has to drive up and back up 15 times trying to turn in these little bitty, no access roads that we really need two vehicles.”
“One is for the tax assessor on the roads and me because I am going to ride this county from can to can’t,” Robertson continued. “We are going to find every mobile home that has been put out, and we are not getting monies for. I had two on there because the other truck is too big…whatever you need to do with it. It can be gone.”
A motion to purchase two new vehicles was never made by the county board.
“The truck that we bought is for the appraiser,” said Supervisor Cobie Collins.
Collins said the tax appraiser has always used a pick-up truck for travel purposes, and it has never been a problem in the past. He also said, for as long as he can remember, the tax assessor has never had their own personal, county-purchased, vehicle.
“We pay the appraiser to go out on these properties,” Collins said. “It wouldn’t be fair to the tax payers to go up on their taxes to buy two new SUVs. With some of the roads we have in Yazoo County, a SUV couldn’t even make it down them.”
