Conrad Tolson
Special guests and visitors for the Robson Ranch Republican Club July meeting were December Storm Cox (running for Assessor) and Rob Hudelson and Gabby Mercer (running for Arizona House) who made pre-election visits. Mike McCord (incumbent candidate for County Treasurer) also visited and offered the following information about how his office functions.
He was recruited by the former Treasurer and ran in the July 30 election unopposed. He cited examples of improvements in the office since he was elected in 2016. Before he took office, the 200,000 pieces of mail (tax payments) received at tax time were hand processed. It used to take about two weeks to open and process them all. He was able to get the Board of Supervisors to approve a machine that automatically does many tasks formerly done manually and can now process the load at tax time in about six hours. His office also passes reported address changes on to the Assessor’s office.
Previously, unpaid tax liens were auctioned off, and the winning bidders were getting cheap housing and foreclosed owners were losing out. Foreclosed homes are now sold on the open market and the foreclosed owners receive the proceeds minus unpaid taxes and liens.
The Treasurer’s investment goal is capital preservation. They invest the tax proceeds for all the taxing authorities in safe investments (currently earning about 4.5%) and pass the revenues on to the taxing authorities with interest. Taxing authorities include schools, libraries, fire districts, some public utilities, and the like.
Pinal is currently one of the fastest growing counties in the U.S., and the county investment pool currently stands at about $1 billion.
The RR Republican Club meets monthly, usually at 9 a.m. on the second Saturday of the month. If you would like to visit our club to learn more about what’s going on in our community and state, contact Ceil Levatino at c[email protected] for meeting times and locations.