Responsibilities of the Property Assessor

Donna Whitaker is a lifelong resident of Sullivan County. She began working in the Assessor’s Office August of 2001 in the Reappraisal Department. In August 2002 she moved to the Mapping Department as a Deputy Assessor. Donna was elected Assessor of Property in 2018. Having previously served in the School Department since 1992 she has 28 years of County service. She and her husband Perry have been married 35 years and they have two children, Wes and his wife Laura, Clarissa and her husband Taylor. They have one granddaughter Charlotte. Donna and Perry are active members of Indian Springs Baptist Church in Kingsport.

The Assessor of Property is a Tennessee constitutionally elected official who serves the Sullivan County Citizens for a four-year term.

The primary responsibility of the Assessor of Property is to discover, list, classify and value all real and personal property within the jurisdiction of Sullivan County. This includes conducting a state mandated county wide reappraisal every four years. The next reappraisal is scheduled for 2025. This office is also responsible for maintaining ownership records, editing and maintaining assessment maps, preparing tax rolls for the county Trustee and all municipalities, reporting assessments to the local and State Board of Equalization and managing Greenbelt and Forestry assessments.

Now that you have a better idea of what the Assessor of Property does. Here are a few things the Assessor does not do. Contrary to popular belief, the Assessor:

Does not set the tax rate

Does not send out the tax bill

Does not collect property taxes