Bill Frazer announced his candidacy for Candidate for Houston City Controller in February of 2013.
Mr. Frazer has many years of experience in the accounting and financial services industry. From 1991 through 2012 he served as Chief Financial Officer of CB Richard Ellis Capital Markets, one of the world’s leading commercial real estate financial services firms. As a board member of GEMSA Loan Services, a partnership between CBRE and GE Capital Real Estate, he helped form one of the nation’s largest commercial real estate loan management and advisory service companies.
Mr. Frazer has been a Certified Public Accountant since 1975. He is a past President of the Houston CPA Society and has served on the Board of Directors of the Texas Society of CPAs for the past 20 years. CPAs must meet stringent educational and professional requirements and are trained to establish effective business operations. They must adhere to strict state licensing guidelines that distinguish them from other accountants and professionals in the financial services industry, and they must abide by a strict code of professional ethics.
Mr. Frazer is involved in his church and his community. He is a member of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church and has served on its Vestry and is currently a member of its Senior Council. He serves on the advisory committee of the Episcopal Diocese’s Camp Allen. He is actively involved in helping Volunteer Interfaith Caregivers-Southwest provide much needed transportation services to elderly Houstonians who can no longer drive. He has recently joined the Board of Directors of St. James House, a retirement community sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Texas to serve those who need housing and critical nursing care in their later years. He believes “that we cannot depend solely on government programs to meet all of the needs of our fellow citizens, but must commit to do our part to make Houston a better place for all.” Mr. Frazer seeks to continue his commitment and dedication to the community of Houston through his candidacy for the position of City Controller.
Mr. Frazer was raised in San Antonio and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1973 with a BBA in Accounting. He began his accounting career in Houston as a staff accountant with Ernst & Ernst. He has been a licensed CPA since 1975. He and his wife Jean, also a CPA, moved into the Ayrshire area 37 years ago. Their two children, Jennifer and Jeremy, attended public schools and graduated from Bellaire High School.
It is especially timely in light of the Mayor’s attempted takeover of Memorial Park in order to give TIRZ 16 an opportunity to put liens on the park as it borrows money for a Bus Rapid Transit System. Don Hooper wrote about that nonsense yesterday – click here to read all about it.
I will note that his claim about property valuations appears to be wrong, according to one of the commenters on that post who did a little digging, and that explanation about TIRZes doesn’t jibe with my understanding of how they work. Perhaps this is a transcription failure on Big Jolly’s part, I don’t know.
No transcription problem at all. Simple math. What Kuffner and WRM didn’t do was read the darn report. If they had, they would have seen this:
The FY2012 property tax value estimate is derived from CAD projections provided to the City in April 2011. The taxable value used was $142 billion. This amount is a net of the senior/disabled exemption, which was $70,862, the same as FY2011. This is projected to exempt as much as $6.4 billion in taxable value from the tax rolls, reducing revenue by an estimated $40.6 million in FY2012.
The estimated taxable value is then reduced by the estimated incremental value of properties within the Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones (TIRZ).
You see, TIRZ’s reduce the amount of property valuation that the City of Houston can tax – exactly what I said. So, hopefully, these two and many more will use tomorrow’s meeting as an opportunity to learn what a real accountant could do when he is elected to the position of Controller.
The Downtown Houston Pachyderm Club meets weekly upstairs at the Spaghetti Warehouse in downtown Houston – click here for a map. They start promptly at noon and finish up at 1:00 pm. Good food, good company, good conversation.
