Anne Woodward Ahrendt Announces Her Candidacy for Wakulla County Property Appraiser

Anne Woodward Ahrendt, 48, former Wakulla County Property Appraiser, announced that she has qualified for and will again seek the office of Wakulla County Property Appraiser.  Mrs. Ahrendt served as Property Appraiser for 18 months following the untimely passing of Ronnie Kilgore in 2005.

During those 18 months, Mrs. Ahrendt made significant improvements to the Property Appraiser’s office.  These accomplishments included the following:

• Anne Ahrendt moved the Property Appraiser’s office from the old location in the County Courthouse to its new modern facility.
• Anne Ahrendt led the office out from under two pending Administrative Orders from the Department of Revenue upon meeting appropriate office standards and practices.  This prevented Wakulla County homeowners from losing their property tax exemption resulting in a tax savings of over $400.00.
• Anne Ahrendt made the office more accessible to the general public by providing email access, updating the phone systems and the mywakullapa.com website.
• Anne Ahrendt put into place financial safeguards to the office accounting systems; provided for employee education, and instituted performance standards as well as boosting employee morale.
• Anne Ahrendt instituted automatic homestead exemption renewal for the first time ever in Wakulla County.  She instituted off site office hours for the convenience of taxpayers who needed to file for exemptions and classifications.
• Anne Ahrendt hired and provided training for an employee to perform GIS parcel mapping in house, providing a large savings to taxpayers.

Mrs. Ahrendt indicated that she was proud of these accomplishments and flattered that others would attempt to take credit for them.  Mrs. Ahrendt said she was compelled to run for office due to the degradation of office systems and the lack of fairness and equity in the assessments and tax roll since she left office.  “Wakulla County should have experienced a dramatic increase in revenues resulting from Wal-Mart’s $9.5 million addition to the real property tax roll.  Instead, we are seeing a huge decline in revenues which may require a tax increase to generate the same revenues as last year.  I want to know what happened to this commercial revenue windfall to Wakulla County.”

{sidebar id=1}She also indicated that she was extremely concerned by the discrepancies in assessed values on the Property Appraisers website when compared to the assessed values and taxes actually paid on the Tax Collector’s website.  “People are aware of what is going on with these discrepancies.  When someone gets an unfair or illegal break on their taxes, the rest of the taxpayers have to make up the difference with an increase in their tax burden and that is not fair.”

“There will be some individuals who will be angry at me for pointing this out and will use their positions to discredit me.  My job will be to provide fairness and equity to all.  If one person gets a break on his taxes, all his neighbors should get the same tax break.  I firmly believe that the majority of Wakulla’s citizens are ready for a change and I will represent them with integrity and honesty.”

Anne Ahrendt has indicated that she intends to institute a number of new innovations and improvements to the Property Appraiser’s office if she is elected.  Some of the innovations she has proposed are as follows:

• Anne Ahrendt will initiate automatic renewals on all exemptions and classifications including disabled veterans, widows/widowers exemptions and agricultural classifications.
• Anne Ahrendt will continue her proactive work on behalf of Wakulla County taxpayers through involvement with the Property Appraisers Association of Florida’s Legislative committee by advocating creation of a “Heritage” classification so that families who have owned waterfront properties for generations won’t have to sell their family treasures just to pay taxes.
• Anne Ahrendt will add an audit function to procedures to eliminate costly “keying errors” which numbered in the hundreds in 2007 and cost Wakulla County taxpayers thousands of dollars.
• Anne Ahrendt will seek to have a Special Magistrate conduct the Value Adjustment Board proceedings-at no cost to Wakulla County-to get the politics out of property assessment.
• Anne Ahrendt will seek to expand GIS mapping systems for coordinated use by all county offices and utilities that need map information in carrying out their respective functions.

Other platform items and issues will appear on her web site, www.anneahrendt.com , which will be going live July 1, 2008.  “I encourage all Wakulla County voters to visit the website.  I will once again have a blog and will address timely issues as they emerge throughout the campaign season.”

Her qualifications for office include an extensive background in the fields of real estate and appraisal, finance and office administration.  She graduated from Florida State University with a B. S. degree in Business.  She has taken additional coursework in Public Administration, Administrative Law, Urban and Regional Planning and Administrative Budgeting.  She has completed the educational requirements necessary to receive the designation of “Florida Certified Appraiser” from the Florida Department of Revenue and the International Association of Assessing Officers.

She worked for seventeen years for the State of Florida as a Financial Analyst at the State Board of Administration.  She then obtained her real estate license and sold real estate for Century 21 First Realty in Tallahassee and worked for the St. Joe Company at SummerCamp. 

Mrs. Ahrendt is active in many community organizations, including the Wakulla Professional and Business Women’s Association, the Wakulla Chamber of Commerce, Keep Wakulla Beautiful, and is the treasurer for the Crawfordville Lion’s Club.  She is a member of Wakulla Presbyterian Church, an Elder and serves as a member of the New Church Development Committee for the Florida Presbytery.

Her husband, Kurt, is an attorney employed with the Office of the Attorney General.  They have one son, John, who is a fifth grader at Shadeville Elementary and share their home with their beloved pets, Smudge, their DSH cat and Maggie, their Yellow Labrador.

This announcement originally published on June 25, 2008.

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Written by :

mkwestmark

 

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