Otero County assessor speaks at Tea Party meeting

The Otero County Tea Party hosted their monthly meeting on Saturday afternoon and invited Steve Boyle, the Otero County Assessor, to be their guest speaker.

"I feel that any time I can give more information about the county or any of the offices, it's more information for those folks so they know more about their county and they can make better decisions about things," Boyle said. "The more they know, the more they can ask better questions."

Boyle, who attended Alamogordo High School and New Mexico State University-Alamogordo, started his career in hospitality management while working as a busboy at the Holiday Inn in Alamogordo.

"I left with the Holiday Inn with a career for a long time," he said. "I came back to this county in 2010 and I ran for the position of assessor but Donald Yee beat me out."

After losing the election, Boyle said he applied for a job with the City of Alamogordo and was hired as an accounting manager under the City's finance director.

"I worked for them for four years and then I ran again this past year for Assessor and it all worked out, I got elected," he said. "The good thing about working for the city was that I learned a lot about government and how they do things and I learned more about the county, so it was actually a good job to have before I became the assessor."

Boyle said his favorite aspect of being the Otero County Assessor is helping the citizens and doing what's fair.

"I don't want it to be unfair if this is happening for these people and that's happening for those, so if I can make it as fair then that's what I'll do," Boyle said. "Numbers have always come easy for me so the numbers part (of the job) is very easy with a finance background."

Boyle spoke during the Otero County Tea Party's meeting about his office and how they service Otero County. One of the most popular subjects he spoke about was property exemptions for residents under 65 years old.

"The New Mexico statute is if you're 65 years or older, we can freeze the value of your residence," he said. "But it's based on a low-income qualifier, you have to make less than $32,000 a year. There's a form we have online or you can come by the office."

Once the form is filled out and everything is done correctly, Boyle said the resident will get the exemption that guarantees the value of the residence won't go up.

"If you don't make lots of money and are an elderly person, than all you see is things go up every year," he said. "Your groceries go up every year, your gas goes up every year and property taxes will go up every year but you can freeze that value and you won't have to pay as much tax for that. It's a great thing New Mexico has done and it's in the whole state, not just this county."

Boyle clarified that this exemption only means a freeze to the value of a residence and that the resident could still see their taxes go up dependent on actions of the City and County Commissions.

Boyle also said the county's 2015-2016 budget is $169,866 million in debt.

"Those debts are from various series of debts that were approved," he said. "The oldest one is ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) series 2007 and that $114 million of the debt, so it's the biggest piece of it. In 2012, they had phase two of the prison and that's $25.6 million, in 2014 they had another prison series and it was $23 million and just recently in 2014 they had Hold Harmless for $7 million."

Boyle said his office is open all week long and anyone with property questions can stop by.

"We're here to serve them and to help them to understand if there's title changes or any other things," Boyle said. "We're there to help them and to answer their questions as much as we can."