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Pohren begins 25th year of service as Mitchell County Assessor
By Warren Haacke, Press-News Reporter
Mitchell County Assessor Dean Pohren places a high value on community service, both in his work and private life.
"My parents always stressed community service as part of their lives and our whole family believes in it. Pohren, who is entering his 25th year of service to Mitchell County as Assessor, also carries that value over into his private life. He was clerk of the Eden Presbyterian Church for 13 years, he is currently the co-chairperson for the Mitchell County Crop Walk and he's a huge supporter of the Special Olympics.
"I have gotten pledges for Special Olympics for the last 20 years to help our local participants and with the help of Legion, the Auxiliary and the Sons of the American Legion we have raised money to send our local Olympians to Ames each year."
Pohren's wife Shari was very active with the Osage Chamber of Commerce during her years working with the Press-News. Son Jason works with the Bridges Mentoring program and both Dean and Shari are members of the American Legion and Auxiliary respectively.
Pohren grew up in Washington, Iowa. Both of his parents, Leonard and Arlene have passed away. Pohren has one sister Karen, who is married, lives in Kalona and works for the University of Iowa. His brother Allen is a hospital administrator in Red Oak and his younger brother Jeff lives in Omaha and works for Frito Lay.
"Our family is very close," said Pohren. "In fact Allen and I have been on 23 RAGBRAI rides together." Pohren has been on the ride 26 times in total.
Pohren attended school in Washington, graduating from high school in 1966. In high school he participated in football, basketball, track and baseball.
After graduation from high school, Pohren attended Burlington Junior College for two years and received an AA Degree.
He then worked for a year before returning to Northeast Missouri State (now Truman State).
Pohren graduated from Northeast Missouri State in May 1971 with a B.S. Degree in Business Administration and minors in Economics and Accounting.
After graduation from college, Pohren was drafted into the U.S. Army in November 1971.
He was assigned to Courier School in Virginia and became a member of the ARFCOS (Armed Forces Courier Service).
He was then sent to Vietnam where he delivered top-secret documents by plane or helicopter several times a week during the war.
Pohren's stint in Vietnam ended in January 1973 when a declaration of peace ended the war. He spent his remaining two years of active service with the ARFCOS Headquarters in Maryland.
After finishing his term with the Army, Pohren worked for three years in the foundry for the Crane Company in Washington.
He then saw an ad for a job as a field appraiser for the local Assessor's Office. He applied for the job and was hired.
"Mr. Lund, the county assessor, gave me the opportunity to work in his office," said Pohren. "He was a tremendous teacher. I appreciated the chance he gave me. I actually took a pay cut to take the job, but it allowed me the opportunity to use my college education. "
Pohren worked at that position for 6 1/2 years before another major opportunity presented itself.
The previous Mitchell County Assessor, Stan Setka, retired and the county sent a letter to Pohren asking if he would like to apply.
"The day I got the letter, Shari's dad Bob was at our house and said I should apply," said Pohren. "He was familiar with the Mitchell County area from his travels as a salesman and he really enjoyed the area and thought it would be a good opportunity for Shari and I."
Pohren applied and was one of four candidates for the job. The Examining Board narrowed it down to two candidates to be interviewed and Pohren was then selected and began work on September 12, 1983.
Pohren states that his job as Assessor is to assess all real property within his jurisdiction as provided by law.
"Real property is revalued every two years," he said. "We have to use certain guidelines and common sense to set values on four classes of property - Residential, Commercial, Industrial and Agricultural. I like the challenge of putting those pieces together. No sooner than you get done with going through the whole process, you have to start all over again with some possible different market factors."
Pohren says the main drawback to his job is that he gets more blame for taxes than he is responsible for.
"My concern is value, not taxes," he stated. "Many people just look at what their tax increase is and then want to know why I raised their taxes. I do not determine what any taxing body levy is except the Assessor's Office with the approval of the Conference Board. "
Pohren continued, " I can't tell you why another taxing body raised their levy, but all taxing bodies have public hearings where people can attend and ask those questions and people need to do that. It's too late to ask those questions after your taxes come out."
Pohren is proud of the efforts of the Assessor's Office over the last 25 years.
"We've always gone out and done our work for equalization. Since 1985, we've only received one equalization order. We've also computerized real estate records using the Parcel Numbering System and the master card file."
Pohren is quick to credit the people working in the Assessor's Office as being valuable parts of the total process.
"I have an excellent staff now," said Pohren. Ed Parcel is our appraiser, Ida Wagner and Amy Folkerts share a clerk's position and Mary Tresch has been with me since "day one" as our office manager. Others who have worked in the office are Roland Lusk, Carol Pollard and Leanne Lifka."
Pohren has been married to his wife Shari for 29 years. The couple has a son Jason who is 26 and works at Food Pride.
"Our extended family also includes two Westies, McDuffy and McMuffin," said Pohren. "They both have provided me with a great deal of stress relief," he chuckled.
Pohren enjoys bicycle riding, although a hip injury has slowed him down a bit.
"40-50 miles at a time is my limit now," he said.
"I also became very serious about golf in recent years," Pohren stated. "It's the only game I've ever played where you can mess up 49 times and do something right once and then I'm ready to go do it again.'
Pohren also likes to bowl. He and Jason belong to Scott's Pumphouse.
"Scott runs an excellent facility and makes it fun to work out because of his different routines, said Pohren.
The Pohren family belongs to the Eden Presbyterian Church, which they view as an extended family. "Pastor Bates is a fabulous person," he said.
Pohren is up for reappointment in January 2009. He also turns 62 in October of 2009.
"I guess my immediate future depends somewhat on whether I get reappointed," he said.
"I've always felt that I make a conscious effort to be conscientious and fair in my work, so we'll just wait and see what happens."
Story created Oct 06, 2008 - 17:11:21 CDT.
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