Tulane University School of Architecture and Built Environment professor Casius Pealer III  is running for Orleans Parish tax assessor. The parish tax assessor oversees the Orleans Parish Assessor’s Office, which is responsible for assigning value to land, homes, commercial buildings and other taxable real estate. 

Pealer is running against the incumbent, Errol Williams, who has occupied the office since 1985.

Pealer, a Florida native and Tulane alumnus, believes Williams plays favorites in his policies.  

“I felt like there was a reason to put forth a different vision for the office, specifically focused on affordability for everybody in the city, not just for owners,” Pealer said. 

Williams was “basically trying to charge market rate taxes for projects that were limited at what they could charge their renters,” Pealer alleged. “In the meantime, other investors and people doing work in the city, [were] uncertain of whether they were going to get treated the way they would expect.” 

Although Pealer would not take office until January 2027, he plans to keep teaching even if elected. Pealer believes his role as assessor would help his students in the real estate program.  

“A main job of the assessor is to determine the value and the factors that go into that include a lot about the building itself, but also about the neighborhood and the community benefits, community amenities that are around it,” Pealer said. “A lot of issues that are that are about value, but also about resilience and social and environmental, which are all things that we talked about in our real estate program in particular.” 

While the assessor’s office does not have any power beyond determining property values, Pealer wants to use the office to inform policy.

“The assessor’s office has information like I said, that can help inform and make people aware of both what’s actually happening and what the impact might be of different policy changes they’d like to see,” Pealer said.  

Pealer also wants to create a database to make real estate data more accessible.  

“One of the things I want to do with assessor’s office is have a department that focuses on data quality and data access, so that other departments in the city, and also potentially researchers,  groups, could access the assessor data that’s public and understand how to use it to help inform their own advocacy,” Pealer said.  

Pealer encourages students to engage in local politics.  

“There’s a new mayor, there’s a whole bunch of city council members,” he said. “There’s a new direction for the city that students can feel the removed from that. But I would really encourage students to pay a little bit of attention. Even if you’re not registered to vote here, it still matters, but if you are registered to vote, I think there’s a lot of reason to pay attention to what candidates are promising.”