Andrew Crockett’s Core Positions: COMPETENCE

On your next plane trip, how would you feel if you found out your pilot had crashed his prior flight? Or maybe a pilot who crashed twice? How about a pilot who crashed the Assessor’s Office three times in the last 28 years?

Would you also feel uneasy if you were flying in an old rattletrap plane like something out of an Indiana Jones movie? And your pilot assures you that he’s giving you a bargain because his good old aircraft was state-of-the-art half a century ago? Because that’s essentially the Santa Clara County Assessor’s Office’s 1970’s-era computer database. And, over the decades, the incumbent has repeatedly failed to upgrade it, then bragged about the money he’s saved. 

For a smooth flight to the future of Santa Clara County, elect Andrew Crockett, CPA, as Santa Clara County Assessor. Because I will ensure that the old rattletrap Assessor’s database finally gets upgraded to reflect the brilliance of Silicon Valley. This upgrade needs happen soon: the cost of the upgrade will only increase over time. The old COBOL programmers we need to export the data are rapidly going extinct!

Cheapness is an expensive habit. By kicking the can down the road, enormous costs will now be inflicted on the taxpayers of Santa Clara County. Costs because of lost upgrade opportunities the incumbent has wasted over the past 28 years! These missed opportunities mean we will need to pay up to $50 million dollars to upgrade in the years ahead. This cost would have only been around $5 million back in 1995, when the incumbent was first elected. Because of his managerial inability to act, the technology that runs the office is now an antique that more properly belongs in the Computer History Museum. 

Andrew Crockett, CPA, believes in expert-led, data-driven decision making and will bring us into the 2020s!