PVA Brady defends her record

Jada Brady, the incum­bent prop­er­ty val­u­a­tion admin­is­tra­tor, wasn’t able to attend a debate in April host­ed by Clark County Republican Women because she was sick with the flu. This time, it was her oppo­nent, Allan Curtis, who did not attend when GOP can­di­dates for coun­ty offices were invit­ed to debate at The Venue at Whiskey & Wiles on May 13.

Curtis, the for­mer coun­ty roads super­vi­sor, has been cam­paign­ing on the promise of low­er­ing prop­er­ty own­ers’ tax assess­ments by using dif­fer­ent methods.

Brady warned that a PVA must be care­ful about low­er­ing assessments.

“When it comes to a blan­ket state­ment like ‘I will low­er everybody’s assess­ment val­ues,’ that is not some­thing that can hap­pen in the PVA’s office unless there’s a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for it,” Brady said.

The Kentucky Department of Revenue informs the PVAs, based on sales in the last six months of the year, how much mon­ey needs to be added to the tax roll. That num­ber doesn’t come from the coun­ty gov­ern­ment, the tax­ing dis­tricts, or the prop­er­ty val­u­a­tion admin­is­tra­tor, she explained.

The PVA is required by Section 172 of the Kentucky Constitution to assess prop­er­ty at 100 per­cent of fair cash val­ue, and any PVA who doesn’t do that can be removed from office by the state, she said. If all prop­er­ty val­ues were to decrease, she not­ed, it would be “a hor­ren­dous thing for Clark County.”

“We do not want to see those prop­er­ty val­ues go down,” she said.

In response to the only pre­pared ques­tion, which was whether she would go out and look at prop­er­ty, and “not just look at what’s been sold,” Brady answered that the state pro­hibits her staff from going inside people’s homes. Still, they can look at what is on the out­side, and that is part of the assess­ment process.

“I can’t fix every prob­lem when it comes to assess­ments, but what I can do is lis­ten,” and that is what she and her staff do every day, she said.

Brady said that as PVA, she has worked hard to bring trans­paren­cy, acces­si­bil­i­ty, and mod­ern­iza­tion to the office. She said she edu­cates the pub­lic about the office and its oper­a­tions through an email cam­paign, social media, meet­ings at the pub­lic library, and inter­views with local media.

Whichever can­di­date wins the Republican nom­i­na­tion will face for­mer PVA Jason “Apple” Neely, a Democrat, in the November gen­er­al election.

Brady beat Neely for re-elec­tion by a hand­ful of votes in 2022.