The Kalamazoo City Commission voted unanimously Monday night to renew a three-year contract with Wayne County Appraisal LLC for property assessing and assessor of record services, a practical necessity given a statewide shortage of certified assessors, but one that prompted a statement from Commissioner Slaby about what the city should be working toward.
The Contract
The city has relied on contracted assessing services since at least 2012, when it became difficult to find candidates with the level-four assessor certification required under Michigan state law. City Manager Hankins presented the renewal as a cost-effective solution that avoids a service gap while the shortage persists.
Commissioners raised questions about performance monitoring and customer service accountability. The discussion surfaced a known gap: residents who contact the city with assessing questions go through the 311 system without necessarily knowing they’re being connected to a contractor rather than a city employee. Commissioner Slaby said she had encountered process breakdowns firsthand, situations where there was no standard response protocol in place, requiring her to go directly to assessors rather than through 311.
City Manager Hankins said the administration would establish more formal performance monitoring timelines as part of the contract. Commissioner Praedel suggested building in regular check-ins between commission members and the finance director to track service quality over time. The city’s CFO, who represented Wayne County Appraisal at the meeting, said the 311 complaint process is the current mechanism for tracking issues, but acknowledged there is no formal satisfaction-tracking system at the individual service request level.
“Cost Should Not Be the Only Factor”
Commissioner Slaby voted to support the contract but pushed back on a narrower framing of the outsourcing question.
“We often discuss outsourcing through the lens of cost savings, but cost should not be the only factor in this conversation,” Slaby said. “There’s a value in having professionals who are accountable to our organization, accessible to residents, invested in our community, not just all across the state and present in the day-to-day life of the city.”
Slaby drew a comparison to the city’s recent decision to issue an RFP for the Kalamazoo Farmers Market after years with the People’s Food Co-op, suggesting the city sometimes defaults to contracting without examining whether there are other paths. Slaby’s pitch: use the city’s 10-year master plan process to ask whether it’s possible to build a pipeline of certified assessors in partnership with the Kalamazoo Promise and local schools, potentially recruiting and training someone locally to eventually come back and serve the city.
“That to me is the type of bold vision that I want us to take on as a commission and as a city,” Slaby said.
She was clear the current contract is the right call for now. The argument was about the planning horizon, not the immediate vote.
City Manager Hankins and COO Lam indicated the administration is open to that longer conversation and would work to formalize performance reporting timelines under the current contract.
