The Los Angeles County Assessor’s Office has won the 2022 National Association of Counties Achievement Award for its appraiser training and workforce development programs.

The award was given as a result of the partnership with the Los Angeles Community College District, Rio Hondo Community College, Workforce Development Aging & Community Services, Department of Human Resources and the Chief Executive Office for programs in real estate appraisal that provide the framework for lifelong pathways to success in government sectors. The award was in the association’s category of personnel management, employment and training.

“I am grateful and honored that our innovative programs have been recognized nationally and once again provide another example of how partnerships with private and public entities can and do work,” Assessor Jeff Prang said. “Also, and perhaps more germane, the two programs create a pathway to positions we need filled.”

Being the largest assessor’s office in the nation and running optimally with a total compliment of more than 700 appraisers, the assessor’s office needed to replace about 30 appraisers due to normal attrition through retirements.

Some years, due to conditions beyond the assessor’s office’s control, classes could not be launched, and positions went unfilled, increasing the workload and training demand in subsequent years.

The two new programs aim to rectify that dilemma. The first program was the appraiser training at West Los Angeles College. The goal is to shift the assessor’s in-house classroom training for basic appraisal principles to the college classroom. A secondary goal was to create interest in assessment appraisal and county careers by the college opening the courses to the general student population.

The second was the Appraiser Assistant Training Program at Rio Hondo College. With the reintroduction of the position, this assessor/college partnership reduced the time required to train appraiser assistants by providing job-essential assessment topics in the college classroom.

“By building inter-departmental and local community partnerships, a pathway has been created to provide employment, career advancement opportunity and build a diverse and inclusive county workforce,” Prang said. “It will further ensure that we can maintain an optimal level of personnel to do the important and necessary work of producing the annual assessment roll.”