She works for the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser. Now she’s running for his job.
Marisol Zenteno started feeling the fire in her belly in 2018.
She had been working for three years for the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser doing valuation and analysis when she started noticing what she describes as a system that favors the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and minorities.
“I see some taxpayers paying more than their share of taxes because they are not versed on how to defend themselves,” she said. “People on a higher economic level hire lawyers and they get reductions. That disenfranchises so many people in the community. Being [Property Appraiser] is about being an advocate for the people and talking to other county agencies and figuring out how we’re going to address these issues and make them fair and equitable property values throughout the county.”
So on June 8 — the second-to-the-last day before the deadline for filing intents to run for office — she finally did what she had been contemplating for a while. She walked to the office of her boss Pedro J. Garcia, the Property Appraiser for Miami-Dade, and handed his assistant a letter telling him she had decided to run for his job. The election will be held as part of the Florida Primaries on Aug. 18.
Zenteno has been on unpaid leave since she announced her intent to run. She will be able to return to her previous job if she loses the election.
The 53-year-old Dominican Republic native, whose parents migrated to the Bronx when she was nine, moved to Miami when she was 18 to study at the University of Miami, Miami-Dade College and Florida International University, where she obtained her masters in public administration.
“That’s where my fervor for public service came from,” said Zenteno, who also raised two kids as a single mom in between her stints at college.
Looking toward the future
Zenteno is running on a campaign that promises to bring the office “into the 21st century.” Among other steps, that means translating the department’s website — a public database that includes tools such as tax values, previous sales prices and details on every property in the county — into Spanish and Creole, to better reflect the area’s diverse population.
She also wants to provide more assistance for taxpayers who want legal representation at hearings for TRIM-notice disputes but can’t afford it.
Zenteno worked for 17 years as an independent contractor for the Miami-based real estate appraisal firm Waronker & Rosen. That job gave her the flexibility to raise her kids as a single mom. Once her children left home for college, she went to work for the Property Appraiser office as an income evaluation specialist, where she currently earns $77,000.
“It was interesting, having been an appraiser, to move over to the mathematical side of things,” she said of the job switch. “I immediately saw many inefficiencies and ways to do things better.”
Civic experience
Zenteno is a past president of the League of Women Voters in Miami-Dade, where she served for two years. She was also the chair of Miami-Dade’s Commission on Human Rights, an advisory board that advocates against discrimination in matters of housing, employment, financing and public accommodations.
The candidate says her civic experience will make her an effective leader for the Property Appraiser department, which generates invaluable funds in property taxes each year. For the county’s current 2020 budget, property taxes alone make up 35%, or nearly $2 billion, of the overall $8.9 billion budget.
“I’ve been involved in my community and I have dealt with many issues,” she said. “It’s critical to understand the importance of this office. People should really consider who they are picking. l will do my best to help them through this crisis, which is going to last for a couple of years, especially with property values.”
Zenteno’s campaign hit a snag early on, when the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser fined her 74-year-old mother Ismelda Santana $11,000 in July. Santana was receiving a senior citizen’s homestead exemption due to her limited income, even though Zenteno had been living with her since 2017.
After her mother paid the fine in full, the Property Appraiser discovered they had inadvertently over-billed her $4,000 over confusion about an efficiency on the property and returned the money.
“My mom is 74 and handles her own affairs,” Zenteno said. “Do you go looking into your parents’ financial affairs? She was doing her thing and I was doing my thing. If [Garcia is] talking about committing fraud, it’s only because he investigated me on company time after I announced I was running. If he hadn’t retaliated against me, the letter to my mom would have sat on a pile of papers for two years.”
Zenteno has been endorsed by the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, the AFCSME Florida labor union, Sen. Annette Taddeo, Sen. Oscar Braynon and the New Florida Majority, a non-profit advocacy group.
Like her opponent, Zenteno remains sanguine about the possibility she could lose the election.
“Everyone asks me if I’m afraid of retaliation when I get back to the job,” she said. “ I always say no, because the taxpayers deserve a better leader than the one they have. This is not a disgruntled employee situation. It’s about being involved and caring instead of being comfortable in your job because people aren’t complaining. Your job is to be transparent and make sure your information is available to everyone.”
This story was originally published August 6, 2020 at 7:00 AM with the headline "She works for the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser. Now she’s running for his job.."
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