Norfolk assessor to key in on business property

NORFOLK

When Deborah Bunn walked into the assessor's office at City Hall for the first time, chain-smoking men computed property values on manual calculators. Files were stacked several feet high on the top of desks.

Bunn was hired by Charlie Sugg, then the city's head assessor, as a clerk stenographer. In 1969, the only women there were secretaries.

Her chances of becoming an assessor looked bleak. Women simply weren't entrusted with deciding how much a homeowner would pay in taxes. She was thwarted for a decade before being allowed to move up the ladder.

In January she returned after a 22-year absence as the first female head assessor in the city's history. She runs a staff of 26 people charged with setting the tax value of approximately 73,000 properties.

She also stepped into a political maelstrom.

Like in most other cities in Hampton Roads, Norfolk residents have been slammed with soaring real estate tax increases in recent years because of ballooning assessments. That has turned the process of assessing property into a political issue.

Taxes rose more than 40 percent for the average Norfolk homeowner in the past three years, while rising just 4 percent for businesses.

A consultant presented a report to the City Council last week that indicates assessments for commercial real estate are, as the watchdog group Norfolk Tea Party 2 charged, too low. They are 70 to 80 percent of market value.

Bunn has been tasked with fixing that problem, which has cost the city millions of dollars in tax revenue.

She is mindful that her good friend Maria Kattmann was fired after a decade as the assessor in Suffolk because of criticism of how her office assessed property.

Bunn doesn't have that kind of problem. Nearly six months into the job, she has the unanimous backing of the City Council.

"She's going to get some things straightened out in that office," Councilman W. Randy Wright said. "She's already made a good start."

Bunn came to Hampton Roads because of the military. She was the daughter of a medical officer. She was living in Portsmouth when her dad went to Vietnam.

She attended several local colleges before dropping out. It was difficult to concentrate on studies, she said, with her father in a war half a world away.

She was working at the Red Cross when she heard the city of Norfolk was hiring. So she applied.

Sugg hired her and took her under his wing. During her third year, she asked to become an assessor. She wasn't allowed to take her first class in assessment until 1980, about eight years later.

"I told Charlie, 'If you let me go to this class, I will prove to you that I can be an appraiser,' " she said.

"I got a 98 on the test and he never argued with me again. He pretty much taught me everything I know."

In 1985, Sugg named her his chief deputy assessor. She moved to Suffolk a year later and became the head city assessor in 1989.

She knocked heads with council members and landowners over assessments.

She left in 1996 and spent most of the next 12 years working for Tyler Technologies, which does contract work for assessors' offices. She commuted while living in Zuni with her husband, Lenzia.

When she heard two years ago that Wayne Trout was retiring as Norfolk's assessor, she was tempted to return home.

Lenzia loved their home in Zuni, located about midway between Richmond and Norfolk, but he said he'd "make it work" if she got the job. She decided not to apply.

Shortly thereafter, her husband of 37 years was diagnosed with cancer and heart problems. He underwent surgery in early 2007 that doctors said was successful. On the day he returned home, the family had a cookout.

"We cooked steaks," she said. "My husband sat in his favorite chair with his granddaughter and read to her."

That evening, he seemed tired but happy. The next morning she awoke to find he had died in his sleep.

"I remember being hysterical," she said. "I don't remember a whole lot after that."

A month after the funeral, Norfolk was advertising the job again.

Friends and family encouraged her to apply. When Mayor Paul Fraim called last fall to offer her the job, she accepted right away.

Bunn said she found the Norfolk assessor's office in good shape, in spite of complaints from taxpayers.

"The previous assessor did great work," Fraim said, "but everyone was living within the same budget they had for years. We had not addressed the great move we were having in commercial property values. Deborah is going to do that for us."

She found that the office had just one person working full time on commercial assessments. She asked permission to hire five commercial assessors; she was told she could hire four.

Bunn told the council earlier this year that commercial real estate assessments were going to rise nearly 12 percent in the fiscal year that begins July 1. She takes no credit for it, saying it occurred because land prices are rising.

Wright said she's being too modest. "I don't believe it's a coincidence that she took the job and then assessments rose," he said.

Cottage Line Civic League president Vic Yurkovic, who has been the Tea Party's most vociferous critic of commercial real estate assessments, invited Bunn to speak to his civic league about assessments.

"She was very direct and very upfront," he said. "She answered everyone's questions and truthfully. She was a breath of fresh air."

Bunn said the move to Norfolk has been therapeutic as she continues to grieve the loss of her husband. It's good to be close to family, she said.

It's also been a challenge.

She wants to update her office's technology, hire someone to supervise commercial real estate and get assessors out of the office and into neighborhoods. She wants to improve the assessor's Web site.

"I always wanted to come back," she said. "Now that I'm here, I know I've got some tough work to do."

Harry Minium, (757) 446-2371, harry.minium@pilotonline.com