By Anita Todd
BARTOW – With nine months under his belt as the new Polk County Property Appraiser, Neil Combee is living up to his campaign promise.
A veteran public servant, Combee was elected last year saying he was ready to meet the challenges of the tremendous growth of Polk County. By using effective leadership and adopting new technologies he said he would aim for efficiency and cost savings.
True to his word, his department “returned” $2.8 million to the Board of County Commissioners. That’s a considerable amount of the $14.53 million budget last year and, this year, the proposed budget is lower by a fraction at $14.46 million.
“I’m really proud of the staff. We all try to be responsible stewards of the taxpayer’s money,” he said.
According to the website, the Property Appraiser is responsible for determining the value of all property in the county on the appraisal date of Jan. 1 of each year. In addition to appraising more than 350,000 parcels of real estate and 75,000 business accounts, the Property Appraiser administers 120,000 homestead exemptions and must determine property entitled to Agricultural Classification.
“It’s been a busy 9 and ½ months. The people who work here are so dedicated. I figured that out after two months,” he said. “These people know what they are doing.”
Once he took over as the leader of the Property Appraiser’s office, he initiated a full efficiency study of the organization. His goal was to ensure the workload was spread out evenly and staffed correctly.
“I wanted to give a new perspective on the way that things had been done,” he said. “No one from ‘the outside’ had been in this position for 90 years. So, it was time for that to happen.” Combee is referring to “the outside” as being someone who is elected that wasn’t an employee of the Office already. For example, Marsha Faux, the PA immediately before Combee, worked in the Office for 12 years before she was elected.
The efficiency study showed that several positions needed to be eliminated.
“The positions that were eliminated weren’t filled at the time, so no one lost their job.” He explained “And the job load seems to be spread out evenly. Everyone’s position is very specific, no one can go over and do someone else’s job.”
Additionally, he and key members of the staff visited neighboring county property appraisers’ offices.
“We went to see how they are doing things,” he said. They visited Hillsborough and Lee Counties among others.
One tool they learned about during their visits and have adopted is Nearmap, a desktop application that provides updated aerial imagery that is touted to be better than satellites or drones. It allows employees to inspect, analyze and visualize locations with high-resolution data. This allows staff to perform their jobs at their desks instead of out in the field. Using this technology will decrease the number of cars in the fleet, saving money on fuel, insurance, and employees’ time. More advanced technology is scheduled for next year that will automatically show if a change occurred on the property.
“Change detectors save a lot of time and money and that’s our goal – efficiency,” Combee said.
Combee, born and raised in Lakeland, attended what is now known as Polk State College and Florida State University. He served as a County Commissioner from 1988 to 2004. He was appointed and served from 2005-2012 to the governing board of the Southwest Florida Water Management District. He then served until 2017 in the Florida House of Representatives. Next, he was appointed by President Donald Trump to serve as the state executive director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service in Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Then, he was elected again as a County Commissioner in 2020 and served until 2024.
He said he has no further political aspirations and wishes he would have started in the PA officer earlier in his life.
Probably the most public part of the PCPA office is the website and those who use it may have noticed some changes recently.
“We are trying to make it more user-friendly,” he said adding that the IT department staff are some of the best he’s ever worked with. “The changes are trial and error. If it’s not working, we aren’t going to be stubborn and keep it. We will do what’s best.”
He said those who use the website on a consistent basis sometimes complain of how slow it loads. “It’s called ‘scraping data’ and it happens when a big website like Zillow comes onto our site and scraps all our date for their website,” Combee said. “It slows our site considerably.”
Additionally, he added weekly senior management meetings to the schedule to be able to “look each other in the eye and find out what we can do to help each other,” he said. Also, once a month he holds a full agency meeting. “We get our 100 plus people in one room and give employee updates on what we are all doing, recognize years of service and just talk about things,” he said. There are currently about 125 employees with some openings available. They have also held realtor training on the website changes.
Once a year, the Department of Revenue does an audit. On alternating years, there is an in-depth audit that randomly pulls a significant number of properties, their appraisals and then compares them with the Polk County Property Appraiser’s values for the selected properties. On alternating years, it is not as in depth but still serves the same purpose.
“The audits occur to ensure adherence to required methodology and that our values are correct and fair,” Combee said.
He also said that he doesn’t believe there will be an elimination of property taxes. However, he hopes the government finds a way to take some of the pressure off homeowners. He wants to remind residents that in 2026 there may be a resolution on ballots concerning homestead exemptions. If passed by voters, homestead exemptions would increase in turn saving homeowners money. The resolution will need 60 percent of the vote to pass.
Combee said homeowners are always welcome to call the Property Appraisers Office with any questions or if they feel their property taxes are incorrect.
“There’s a lot of properties and sometimes mistakes are made,” he said. “We’re human.”
To reach the Polk County Property Appraiser’s Office, call 863.534.4777 or visit in person at
255 North Wilson Avenue, Bartow or online at polkpa.org.
