Neely makes his case for PVA on experience

Former Property Valuation Administrator Jason Neely was the Democratic incum­bent in 2022 when Clark County was trend­ing Republican. After one term in office, he lost to chal­lenger Jada Brady by only a hand­ful of votes.

Four years lat­er, Neely is again the Democratic nom­i­nee and thinks he can make the case to vot­ers that he is more qual­i­fied than the cur­rent incum­bent because he has con­sid­er­ably more expertise.

Prior to being elect­ed Clark County PVA in 2018, Neely had served nine years in the Fayette County Property Valuation Administrator’s Office and had become the office’s No. 2 deputy.

In an inter­view last week, he said for­mer con­stituents con­vinced him to again become a candidate.

“Actually, I was unsure for about three years whether I was going to run again,” he admit­ted. “I’d always said that if I ever lost an elec­tion, I prob­a­bly wouldn’t go back to it. But eight votes is not a lot. And I heard from a lot of peo­ple that want­ed me to run again.”

Eight is the num­ber of votes he lost by after a recount.

The peo­ple who encour­aged him includ­ed real estate agents and apprais­ers, he said.

“I was told I had one of the best PVA offices in the state of Kentucky when I ran it,” he remarked.

Asked why he believes he is the bet­ter can­di­date, Neely answered: “Thirteen years of expe­ri­ence is invaluable.”

“Not tak­ing shots at her at all, but she had zero expe­ri­ence com­ing in. She’s learn­ing on the job. She’s learn­ing as she goes. And it took me a long time to learn every­thing I’ve learned. This isn’t a job where you can come in on day one and learn it. It takes time,” he said.

Neely worked in mul­ti­ple branch­es of the state’s sec­ond-largest PVA office. He start­ed out in motor vehi­cles, then became a res­i­den­tial asses­sor, farm asses­sor, res­i­den­tial super­vi­sor, and com­mer­cial assessor.

“At the end, I was the chief deputy for Fayette County,” he said.

The role of the PVA is to assess the fair mar­ket val­ue of real estate, vehi­cles, and tan­gi­ble prop­er­ty for the pur­pose of deter­min­ing the tax bills based on the rates that are set by the state, coun­ty, city, school dis­trict, and spe­cial pur­pose tax­ing districts.

Although the PVA is an elect­ed coun­ty posi­tion, the PVA and his or her staff are essen­tial­ly employ­ees of the state Revenue Cabinet, which pays their salaries.

A PVA may be removed from office by the state for will­ful error.

In the last eight years or so, prop­er­ty tax bills have risen sharply, but that’s because land and build­ing val­ues have climbed, not because tax rates have.

In fact, under a 1979 Kentucky law, state prop­er­ty tax rates must be reduced any­time the total of assess­ments exceeds the pre­vi­ous year’s assess­ments by more than 4 per­cent, and local tax rates that pro­duce more than 4 per­cent addi­tion­al rev­enue over the year before must be sub­ject to a recall vote.

According to Brady, local prop­er­ty tax rates in Clark County are the low­est they have been in a decade.

It’s quite dif­fer­ent for prop­er­ty values.

“In 2018, Clark County start­ed sky­rock­et­ing,” Neely said.

That was the year he was first elected.

Within a short time, mod­est homes that had been sell­ing for $150,000 were sell­ing for $200,000 or $230,000, he noted.

“When you start get­ting these sales, you’ve got to fol­low what the sales say,” Neely said.

During the Republican pri­ma­ry this year, Allan Curtis, who chal­lenged Brady for the nom­i­na­tion, ran on a plat­form of low­er­ing assess­ments by chang­ing the way they are done.

“You can’t just come in and say, ‘I’m going to low­er everybody’s prop­er­ty tax­es,” Neely said. “That’s not realistic.”

Curtis had said he would like to go out and talk with prop­er­ty own­ers before they got their tax bills in the mail and let them be part of the process for deter­min­ing their assessments.

“It would be hard to go out to every person’s house and assess it,” Neely said.

Under the cur­rent method, a quar­ter of the coun­ty is assessed every year, based on a var­i­ous fac­tors, includ­ing what prop­er­ty is sell­ing for in par­tic­u­lar areas.

But own­ers can appeal their assessments.

“People have a right to come in and dis­pute the val­ue. That’s … part of the process,” Neely explained.

Occasionally, the prop­er­ty own­ers are right, and the PVA has to stand up for them.

“You’ve got to fight against the Department of Revenue some­times,” Neely said.

He said the depart­ment mon­i­tors the assess­ments, and accu­ra­cy must be with­in 10 percent.

“You don’t make a lot of friends in this job,” he men­tioned with a smile.

“Everybody wants to pay less in tax­es, and I get that, and they want to sell their house for the most they can get, and I get that too. But the way the tax sys­tem is set up, when prop­er­ty val­ues go up, tax rates go down. When prop­er­ty val­ues go down, tax rates go up,” he said.

Neely said he is con­sci­en­tious about get­ting it right.

“When I did an assess­ment, I did every one of them as if, ‘What if this end­ed up on the front page of the paper?’ How would I defend it?” he said. “I’m not putting out assess­ments just willy-nil­ly. I ought to be able to defend it to anybody.”

Not only is the PVA’s office an elect­ed posi­tion, but accord­ing to state law, it is also a par­ti­san posi­tion. It shouldn’t be, Neely said. It doesn’t mat­ter whether the PVA or the prop­er­ty own­er is a Republican or a Democrat. Clients are not asked about their pol­i­tics because it’s irrelevant.

Asked whether he would do any­thing dif­fer­ent­ly if elect­ed again, Neely said: “I would just get the office run­ning top notch and as smooth as possible.”

He would make sure the office’s tech­nol­o­gy is up to date, and that the office oper­ates effi­cient­ly and with­in bud­get, he said.

“Before, I worked well with all elect­ed offi­cials,” Neely said, imply­ing that he would do so again.

Brady has put an empha­sis on edu­cat­ing the pub­lic about what the PVA’s office does. Neely said he would as well.

“The job is trans­par­ent,” he said. “I would come and speak to any­body who want­ed me to speak.”

Neely is bet­ter known by many of his friends and acquain­tances as “Apple.”

He was giv­en the nick­name in sec­ond grade by the late Donnie Parsons, who was Clark County’s direc­tor of parks and recre­ation and a Little League coach.

“He always gave peo­ple nick­names,” and they “stuck,” he said.

“There’s peo­ple to this day that call me ‘Apple,’” he said.

Neely, 44, was born and raised in Winchester. He is mar­ried to Maggie, his wife of 19 years, and they have two chil­dren, Kylie, 15, and Brady, 12.

He is a 2000 grad­u­ate of George Rogers Clark High School and a 2006 grad­u­ate of the University of Mississippi, where he earned a degree in polit­i­cal science.

Neely was an assis­tant boys’ bas­ket­ball coach at GRC for sev­en years under Coach Josh Cook, dur­ing which time the team won the state title and were run­ners-up the fol­low­ing year.

Currently he oper­ates J.B. Steele’s restau­rant in Lexington’s Hartland shop­ping cen­ter with two part­ners, Bryce Steele and Blake Scott, who also own A.P. Suggins on Romany Road.

When he was Clark County PVA, Neely was active in the Winchester Rotary Club and the Winchester-Clark County Chamber of Commerce, and when his son was lit­tle, he coached Civitan sports. But because run­ning a restau­rant is so demand­ing, he doesn’t have time for those activ­i­ties now.