Tax Collector's Office

Unlike other agencies that we have visited, I feel that the Tax Collector's Office drove home the fact that their largest goal is to serve the public in a timely manner. Preston made a point to stress how hard they would work to meet a deadline. I believe that their resolution to return documents speedily made my burden seem a little bit lighter when it comes to investigative reporting.
In regards to their Powerpoint presentation, I believe that they did an excellent job on helping me to further understand the meaning of items on tax documents. Before listening to their lecture, I had researched tax records and had been bogged down by the legal jargon. Preston easily described what each item meant and what its value was in regards to a news story. In addition to addressing navigation of their website, I especially paid heed to Preston’s lecture on what items would be best to research when gathering together a news story. His list of public records used for creating a story got me to think about what documents I should request for my public figure biography. I was aware form previous lectures as to what documents were available to me, but was still confused as to how they were accessed and who could offer them to me.
My only concern with the lecture was that I became a bit lost in all the discussion of numbers including homestead exemptions and tax credits. I’m not completely sure how to integrate that into a story and was therefore thoroughly confused as to the mathematic equations. If it were possible, I believe that examples of why these exemptions would make a story newsworthy were offered that it would aid my understanding of the process. For example, if a discussion detailed how someone may have used the homestead exemption to benefit themselves when in fact they abused the system.