Assessment Matters by Valuebase.ai

Join host Will Jarvis as he sits down with Ellen Brideau, a veteran Massachusetts assessor with 20 years in the field and roots in assessment going back to the early 1980s. Ellen shares her perspective on why annual reassessments lead to fairer outcomes, makes a case for broadening the tax base by reconsidering exemptions for nonprofits and institutions, and discusses the importance of good property data and letting assessors inside homes. She also touches on career advice for new professionals entering the field and previews her upcoming conference presentation on identifying and defending against AI-generated property tax appeals.

• 00:00 - Introduction and Ellen Brideau's background in Massachusetts assessing
• 01:48 - What the public most misunderstands about property taxes
• 03:30 - How Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire differ on reassessment cycles
• 05:55 - Policy ideas: broadening the tax base and reconsidering exemptions for nonprofits and institutions
• 07:48 - Assessment caps, deed-restricted affordable housing, and full market value in Massachusetts
• 09:22 - Personal lessons from a career in assessment and advice for new professionals
• 12:00 - AI-generated appeals: how Ellen was caught off guard and what she's learning

Join host Will Jarvis as he sits down with Brad Elridge, county appraiser in Lawrence, Kansas, to discuss the case for property tax and how to reframe it as shared community investment. The conversation covers the challenges of vertical equity and valuing properties at both ends of the spectrum, the administrative burden of exemptions and assessment caps, the impact of declining community bonds on public attitudes toward taxation, and lessons from states like California and Florida on what happens when tax policy goes sideways.

• 00:00 - Introduction and Brad's background spanning private and public sector appraisal
• 04:22 - Rebranding property tax as shared community expenses
• 06:42 - Why property taxes feel more painful than income taxes and the case for monthly payments
• 09:47 - Progressive property taxation, vertical equity, and the challenge of valuing high-end and low-end properties
• 13:43 - The problem with exemptions: administrative burden, unfunded mandates, and policy creep
• 15:42 - Assessment caps, inequity, and lessons from California and Florida
• 20:42 - The need for a property tax policy playbook for policymakers
• 23:36 - Declining community bonds, cultural shifts, and their connection to anti-tax sentiment
• 26:30 - Economic signals, retail sales trends, and navigating uncertain times
• 29:20 - Brad's one-sentence pitch: splitting the pizza as a community

Join host Will Jarvis as he sits down with James Cusick, a former AT&T Bell Laboratories software engineer and adjunct faculty member at Columbia University, who found his way to property tax policy through the Henry George School in Manhattan. The conversation covers the principles of land value taxation, how a single tax on land could replace all other taxes at the local, city, and even federal level, the role of land value capture in transit-oriented development like New York's High Line and subway system, and the problem of speculative land-holding in cities like New York and Detroit. James also shares insights from Japan's public-private partnership model for rail and real estate development, and introduces the interactive tools he's built to help policymakers and the public explore Georgist economics.

• 00:00 - Introduction to Assessment Matters and guest James Cusick

• 00:37 - James's background in software engineering at Bell Labs and Columbia University
• 01:33 - Discovering the Henry George School and the concept of land value tax
• 02:42 - Building a land value tax calculator covering all U.S. counties
• 04:38 - How a single land value tax could replace all other taxes, including New York City's $125 billion budget
• 05:53 - The pitch to policymakers: simplification, administrative efficiency, and reducing speculation
• 07:42 - Land value capture examples: NYC subway system, the High Line, and Battery Park City
• 09:33 - The problem of vacant lots and speculative land-holding in cities
• 11:52 - Property tax as a "ticket to ride" for public services and the investment vs. affordability tradeoff
• 15:33 - Henry George's anti-speculation philosophy and its modern relevance
• 17:48 - Japan's public-private partnership model for rail and real estate development
• 20:19 - Where to find the Henry George School's tools: LVT calculator, Global Georgism Viewer, subway land value tool, and AI Henry George avatar

Join host Will Jarvis as he delivers a wide-ranging conference presentation covering the macro case for property taxes, the mechanics of AI and large language models, and what these technologies mean for assessment offices. Will draws on his background as a mass appraisal researcher and CEO of ValueBase to explain why property taxes are the most efficient form of taxation for economic growth, how the historical Georgist movement shaped American assessment practices, and why AI tools—from machine learning valuation models to LLMs—are poised to transform day-to-day workflows for assessors while requiring careful validation and human oversight.

• 00:00 - Introduction to the presentation and Will Jarvis's background in mass appraisal research and founding ValueBase
• 03:24 - The big picture: total factor productivity, slowing economic growth since the 1970s, and why it matters
• 06:35 - Why property taxes are more efficient than income and sales taxes for driving economic growth
• 10:09 - Henry George and the historical roots of American property tax policy
• 12:33 - Tax revolts, vertical and horizontal equity challenges, and the capacity crisis in assessment offices
• 15:25 - Three revolutions in valuation: from the Sommer System ledger method to CAMA to the AI era
• 18:00 - Why AI is happening now: cheaper compute, the Attention Is All You Need breakthrough, and how LLMs actually work
• 24:24 - Sam Altman's Moore's Law for Everything thesis and its connection to property tax
• 27:00 - The emerging core skill: managing AI models with real-world context and validating outputs
• 30:14 - What LLMs are and aren't: not databases, not search engines, and not magic
• 33:09 - Machine learning valuation models: gradient boosted trees, overfitting risks, and the big five property characteristics
• 37:22 - Practical LLM use cases for assessors: drafting correspondence, summarizing, research, and brainstorming
• 39:38 - Key pitfalls: hallucinations, math errors, out-of-date knowledge, and data privacy considerations

Join host Will Jarvis for a special impromptu episode recorded at a conference in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Jay — a Norfolk-based assessor and host of the Conversations in the Mirror podcast — flips the script and interviews Will. Together they explore how property taxes fund local communities, the regressive nature of current assessment models, tax abatements for large commercial properties like stadiums, practical AI tools for entrepreneurs and assessors, and what drove Will to build Valuebase from rural North Carolina into an $8 million-funded company serving assessment offices nationwide.

• 00:00 - Introduction and how Jay's impromptu interview came together at a Charlottesville conference
• 02:00 - Will's background: growing up in rural eastern North Carolina and attending UNC Chapel Hill
• 03:30 - The founder mindset: balancing arrogance with humility and outworking the competition
• 05:00 - What kept Will going through the hardest startup moments: mission over money
• 06:45 - What Valuebase does: building automated valuation models and tackling regressive property taxes
• 08:30 - How property owners should think about property taxes as community investment
• 10:30 - Property taxes as the foundation of local government revenue (65-75% of city budgets)
• 12:00 - Tax abatements for stadiums and large corporations: who really bears the burden
• 14:00 - Favorite AI tools: Claude, Grok, Gemini, Perplexity, and why specificity matters over AI hype
• 16:00 - Practical AI advice: setting up Claude CoWork for daily workflows
• 17:00 - How Will raised $8 million: podcasting, relationship-building, and asking for advice instead of money
• 19:00 - Rapid-fire reflections: Will's definitions of success, service, and identity as a founder
• 21:30 - The 10-year vision: Valuebase in 80% of U.S. assessment jurisdictions and the Jack Dangermond inspiration

Join host Will Jarvis as he sits down with Jamie Christensen, founder of Civic Vanguard, a local government software company focused on geographic information systems. Jamie shares his nearly 30-year journey in GIS and local government technology, discusses how AI is enabling a reimagined "digital counter" experience for citizens interacting with their local governments, explores the misaligned incentives in government software procurement and how AI is disrupting legacy vendor lock-in, and outlines his vision for agentic AI tools that orchestrate GIS workflows across localities nationwide.

• 00:00 - Introduction and Jamie Christensen's background in GIS and local government technology
• 02:47 - How AI and LLMs are transforming spatial information and the ability to get answers
• 05:30 - Founding Civic Vanguard: Reinventing the local government "counter" experience with AI
• 10:05 - What's gone wrong with state and local government software: misaligned incentives and vendor lock-in
• 12:50 - How AI disrupts legacy software economics: lower costs, easier migration, faster innovation
• 16:50 - Free tools and lead magnets: Civic Vanguard's Compass product and no-cost implementation model
• 20:30 - Building trust and empathy with local government clients through content and partnership
• 23:30 - Why founder-led companies are best positioned to navigate the AI transition
• 25:45 - Civic Vanguard's growth plans: expanding beyond Virginia and building agentic GIS tools
• 28:15 - Where to find Jamie Christensen online and closing thoughts

Join host Will Jarvis as he sits down with Robbe Demey, a statistician at Valuebase visiting from Belgium, to explore why property tax matters from both philosophical and economic efficiency perspectives. The conversation covers the Georgist case for land value taxation, the dire state of property tax in Belgium where valuations haven't been updated since 1975, and the persistent challenge of vertical equity in mass appraisal models. Robbe Demey also dives into how cross-validation and ensemble modeling techniques are pushing the frontier of property tax assessment, and what it would take to fix property tax across Europe.

• 00:00 – Introduction and welcome with Robbe Demey, a Valuebase statistician visiting from Belgium
• 01:30 – Why property tax matters: the philosophical fairness argument and economic efficiency of land value taxation
• 03:50 – Natural resources, property rights, and the philosophical case for taxing land versus labor and capital
• 06:00 – Land, violence, and the Georgist proposal for peace through fair resource distribution
• 08:45 – Land reform lessons from Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Asia — and why land value tax is a better mechanism
• 11:20 – The state of property tax in Belgium: outdated 1975 valuations, second-toilet quirks, and government secrecy
• 14:30 – What it would take to fix Belgian property tax through courts, better valuation, and public support
• 16:30 – EU tax policy, VAT coordination, and why property tax works best at the local level
• 17:30 – Vertical equity in property tax: why mass appraisal models systematically overtax low-value and undertax high-value properties
• 22:45 – Cross-validation and holdout sets: why rigorous model testing is essential and underused in the industry
• 27:15 – The frontier of mass appraisal: better locational data, ensemble models, and the wisdom of crowds approach
• 31:30 – How to fix property tax in Europe: reducing income taxes, rallying support, and convincing landlords everyone benefits

Join host Will Jarvis as he walks through practical, hands-on ways assessors can use free AI tools to improve their cost approach valuations. In this solo episode, Will demonstrates how tools like Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and ValPal can be used to extract market depreciation from sales data, build effective age rubrics, standardize condition ratings, generate taxpayer-friendly explanations, and run ratio study checks — all with paste-ready prompts attendees can take back to their offices immediately.

• 00:00 - Introduction and overview of the session on using free AI tools for the cost approach
• 02:22 - Why the cost approach breaks down: depreciation tables, effective ages, and condition ratings
• 04:44 - How time constraints — not lack of knowledge — keep these inputs from being maintained
• 07:00 - The free AI toolkit in 2026: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and ValPal compared
• 10:15 - Ground rules for using AI safely: stripping identifiers, verifying outputs, and checking IT policy
• 13:20 - The prompt pattern every example follows: role, data, task, and proof
• 16:30 - Extracting market depreciation from your own sales in one prompt, with a live Florida county example
• 20:00 - Effective age: replacing gut feel with a written rubric and using AI vision on field photos
• 23:30 - Condition ratings: running outlier scans and drafting a standardized field guide with AI
• 26:30 - Explainability: generating plain-English cost approach explanations for property owners
• 28:00 - Closing the loop: running ratio study checks with IAAO formulas via AI
• 30:00 - The 30-minute weekly routine, common failure modes to avoid, and concrete next steps

Join host Will Jarvis as he presents a live session at a NYSAA meeting on how modern AI tools can help property tax assessors work more efficiently. Will breaks down how large language models actually work, their strengths and weaknesses including hallucinations and privacy concerns, and shares best practices for prompting these models to get the best results. The session covers real-world use cases like drafting taxpayer correspondence, summarizing legislation, and processing refunds, and highlights free tools including ValPal, RatioPal, and other resources built specifically for assessors.

• 00:00 - Introduction to Will Jarvis and Valuebase's mission to build AI tools for assessors
• 02:45 - What is a large language model and how the underlying technology actually works
• 06:30 - Why LLMs mimic reasoning rather than truly reasoning, and what that means for users
• 07:30 - Real-world use cases: refund processing, email management, and extending office capacity
• 08:45 - Strengths of LLMs: writing, summarizing, researching, and brainstorming
• 09:30 - Weaknesses: hallucinations, math errors, out-of-date knowledge, and privacy concerns
• 12:45 - Best practices for prompting: clarity, context, examples, roles, and even flattery
• 15:45 - Free tools recommended: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity
• 18:15 - Practical use cases: taxpayer correspondence, legal document summaries, and reusable prompt libraries
• 19:30 - Introduction to ValPal and its New York State property tax model
• 21:00 - Audience Q&A: using AI to translate legislation and summarize new exemption laws
• 23:00 - Overview of additional free tools: RatioPal, AgePal, AskDocs, and the depreciation table builder

Join host Will Jarvis as he sits down with Cameron White, a commercial appraiser and new team member at Valuebase, to break down the income approach to commercial property valuation. Cameron shares his journey from residential mass appraisal to the commercial world, walks through the step-by-step mechanics of the income approach—including cap rates, net operating income, and effective gross income—and discusses the challenges of defending valuations in appeals. The conversation also explores how Cameron's passion for trading cards offers surprising parallels to real estate appraisal, from market dynamics and comparable sales to the people skills that give you an edge.

• 00:00 - Introduction and Cameron White's background in mass appraisal and commercial property assessment
• 02:42 - Why the income approach is harder to grasp than sales comparison or cost approaches
• 04:10 - Step-by-step walkthrough of the income approach: PGI, EGI, NOI, and cap rates
• 06:00 - What is a capitalization rate and what does it tell you about a property?
• 07:13 - How appraisers arrive at cap rates using market studies and sales data
• 09:37 - The biggest challenge with the income approach: defending your valuation in appeals
• 10:38 - Transitioning from residential to commercial appraisal and adjusting to the scale
• 11:36 - Hardest commercial property types to value: vacant land, brownfield sites, and one-off cases
• 14:18 - How tax burden shifts to commercial properties and the impact on small businesses
• 16:25 - Trading cards and real estate: parallels in market dynamics, comps, and supply and demand
• 19:50 - Getting an edge in competitive markets through people skills and inventory knowledge
• 21:00 - Cameron's early impressions of working at Valuebase