"It's Time for a Change"....After 25 years the Fresno County Taxpayers need new leadership

By Ron Shapazian

Shapazian states: "It's Time for a Change"....After 25 years the Fresno County Taxpayers need new leadership, not a career bureaucrat, to serve the people's needs. It's time for streamlined operations for recording and friendly courteous service. Valuations of properties must be fair, and consistent with the economic times that faces our people in Fresno County.

"State spending has increased so much that it has surpassed personal income growth."

Elected officials should perform in a way that brings credit Fresno County and the people served. Fresno is an agricultural based economy and property taxes should be commensurate with the economic times.

With a background in managing a business and management, Shapazian wants to reinvigorate the assessor's office by finding solutions which will reduce property taxes in the county, implementing more local control of taxpayer dollars, and maintaining an assessors office that is taxpayer friendly.

In 1992, the State took our local property taxes and shifted them to Sacramento. This hurt our local tax base and the ability to fund our Sheriff's Department and all of the other services Fresno County provides to its citizens. I want to fight this and cap the shift of our county's property taxes to Sacramento, so local governments can use these resources as they see fit, as opposed to how Sacramento dictates.

I have the qualifications as an appraiser and real estate broker for the position, and the ability to implement the much-needed changes. I want to make the Assessor and Recorders office more user friendly so that people are not afraid to come foreword when they feel unfairly taxed.

Shapazian is a Fresno native, graduate of Sanger High and Fresno State, with Bachelors of Science degree in Agri-Business. After a tour of duty in Viet Nam with the U.S. Navy, Shapazian returned to Fresno as Grower Relations Manager for Sun Maid Raisin Growers in Kingsburg before embarking on his present career of Insurance and Real Estate.