Before Google maps, software that could store and print maps and phones that could use Geographic Information Systems to pinpoint your location, Marilyn Hladky was measuring and navigating nearly every acre of Seward County.
For the past 45 years, she has been in the Seward County Assessor’s office, first as a clerk, then deputy assessor and for the past 30 years, being elected and re-elected as assessor.
“I just never thought I would be here that long,” Hladky said in a recent interview. “I never dreamt I would be assessor.”
Over those years, the Nebraska Legislature and voters imposed varied rules on valuing and taxing different land types and uses, homestead exemptions and market trends. Now the assessor’s office also has to align county values with statewide assessments annually, using two years of sales data and state formulas to assess land values.
Hladky remembers the assessor’s office having to shift their valuation systems to a soil type basis in the early 1980s.
She recalls using large maps with clear Mylar film pulled down in layers to identify parcels by soil types and by the acre in the rural area of the county. They used a 10-dot grid with each dot representing a single acre to classify every piece of land over a two- or three-year effort.
With 576 square miles, and each square mile having 640 acres, the whole of Seward County would require 368,640 dots, including cities and villages.
“I love mapping,” Hladky said.
She learned to read and work with blueprints for houses and buildings. For some years the staff had to hand-draw buildings and developments for assessment records.
While computers began to have a presence in offices during that time, their ability to communicate with other computers wasn’t commonplace. The assessor’s office had a computer to enter data into for the state, but the data was then processed and mailed back to the county offices.
Database tools and computer assisted design (CAD) have created specialized roles in today’s assessor’s office. Nebraska requires the assessor and deputy assessor to be certified and complete continuing education in property assessment and tax administration annually.
“It was really a long-term learning process,” Hladky said of her 45 years serving the county.
In 1978, Hladky was living with her parents as she raised her two young daughters born during her first marriage. Amy was 8 years old, and Gail was 4. She was working as a certified nursing assistant at Sundermann Nursing Home and had a second job at the Pamida store. She was looking for a different kind of job.
Leslie Nelson had been Seward County’s assessor for around 10 years then and needed a clerk to do motor vehicle valuations. At that time, people registered their car by getting their title from the clerk’s office, the vehicle’s tax value from the assessor’s office, and the invoice to register the vehicle at the treasurer’s office.
“I didn’t know anything about the assessor. I never worked in an office,” Marilyn said. She passed Nelson’s typing test and was offered the job.
She remembers him saying “I think you would be one to stay.”
“I guess he had confidence in me and I didn’t really realize it over the years,” she said. “He kept giving me more to do.”
Nelson retired after serving as assessor for 20 years and Hladky served as deputy assessor under Eileen Ditmar after her election.
Hladky was first elected county assessor in 1994.
These days, Hladky takes on the administrative and reporting roles, watching legislation on property valuation, and analyzing real estate market trends.
People are often unaware of all that the assessor’s office does, but Hladky said by working from “the bottom up,” she learned all its functions and duties.
“I take great pride in what I have accomplished and in helping people the best I can over the years,” she said.
She isn’t focused on tax rates and levies, but on fairly valuing land and properties on which those rates and levies are applied for Seward County’s 10,620 taxable property parcels.
She has enjoyed being a legislative representative for the Nebraska Association of County Official’s affiliate group for assessors over the years, testifying before panels like the Legislature’s Revenue Committee.
She also chaired the Seward County Courthouse’s centennial celebration.
Hladky’s daughters have grown now and have careers of their own in Lincoln and Lee’s Summit, Missouri. Her three grandchildren are now in their early 20s.
She and Ed Hladky, her husband of nearly 30 years, still farm west of Bee. And she is at work in the assessor’s office.
