MAA President's Message
March/April Message
Hello MAA Members,
As Winter wains and Spring approaches, I have several thoughts I wanted to share with all of you. First of all, I know that we were all hoping for a Detroit Lions Super Bowl, we will have to come back swinging in 2026. That said, ever since I got into Assessing in 2006, my husband has always affectionately referred to March Board of Review as my Super Bowl. If you think about it, he’s right! We work hard all season to prepare and present our best work product, and it all comes down to fair and equitable and defendable assessments. When our taxpayers come in disparaging our work, it can be frustrating – you just have to remember not to take it personally. This is an excellent time to educate your taxpayers about your sales studies and how Property Tax Administration laws are applied.
As I mentioned to those of you who heard my Banquet speech at the 2024 Annual Conference, I became more involved in MAA because I wanted to be in the room where the conversations were happening. Several years back I started attending meetings so that I could learn from the people who had their fingers on the pulse of what was changing and evolving about property tax administration, and it wasn’t long before I found more ways to learn and be involved. Nowadays, it’s even easier to attend an MAA meeting because we always hold them virtually on our Google Meets platform as well.
If you tuned in recently to our February 18th meeting, you would have heard valuable information about pending legislation that will affect how we perform our jobs. In addition to that, there was discussion about the Resource page on the MAA website and how the Standards Committee is working to improve the page to provide even more information to help us do our jobs well and do them consistently. Our Education Coordinator presented upcoming con-ed opportunities both in person and virtually, and discussions were held about other networking and outreach opportunities to enhance our networks and foster relationships with our Affiliate organizations to share upcoming networking and continuing education offerings with the Affiliate network.
I’m also excited to mention that after several years, the Michigan Tax Tribunal was represented at our meeting. Tribunal Chair Judge Patricia Halm attended our meeting and gave a detailed update as to current happenings in the Tribunal, and we are so happy to be rekindling the collaborative relationship between our organizations. As Judge Halm and I collectively agreed, the better we all know and understand each other, the better we can all perform our jobs to the best of our ability to provide fair and equitable property tax administration. We look forward to continuing this relationship and seeing Judge Halm and Chief Clerk Samantha Welton more often.
Please consider tuning into our next meeting in April! There is so much valuable information shared on a myriad of topics. I look forward to seeing more faces, either in person or virtually, at that meeting on April 21 at 10:00am at Delta Township Hall. Thank you for being on this journey with us all, and here’s to warmer weather coming soon. I hope you all have smooth March Board of Review hearings!
Oh! And don’t forget to plan on attending Annual Conference on Mackinac Island from October 19-22, 2025!!!
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Tobias President