MnCCC Spotlight: Sharon Robinson
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I’m the oldest, with 2 brothers and we grew up in St. Joseph MN where we knew most of the residents. There were various ball games, kick the can, ice skating, snowmobiling, and so many more things that kept us busy and “outside”. My father grew up on a farm so we often visited not only his homesite but the farms of his siblings, I’ve always loved animals and I’m sure it’s because of all the exposure to them. I have a very spoiled 8 year chihuahua that is getting way too used to me working from home.
Gerard and I have been married for 38 years and have been blessed with 6 children and 7 grandchildren. We took our children camping and hiking at MN State Parks and over the years we’ve visited most of them. Caves were our favorite attraction so we made sure we traveled to several in MN, WI, IA, and SD. We are so lucky to have such beauty in our great state and we’ve been making it our mission to see all corners of it. There’s nothing better than just driving to see what we find knowing that we can rely on GPS to get us back to someplace familiar and stopping at little hometown diners for some of the best meals we’ve had.
I’ve always been a very crafty person and my current obsession is making greeting cards. In the past year I’ve needed some uplifting with all the restrictions and it’s made me feel good to send monthly cards of cheer to Aunts/Uncles and have heard that I’ve been successful. My oldest granddaughter helped me make 150 cards of cheer multiple times this year to give to the residents of our local nursing home where my Mother and Father-in-law reside. I’ve been making Christmas cards and hope to send cards to so many more extended family this year.
What was your first job?
I babysat for several families, kids are so easy to relate to and there was nothing better than seeing how excited they were to see me even when it was just around the neighborhood. My first real job was a dishwasher at the local family-owned restaurant in my little hometown and no matter your job title we all worked together so well.
What is your role with Stearns county?
My position was a new one 9 years ago with a technical focus, supervision of our administrative team was added and my current title is Property Assessment Coordinator. My team is responsible for our webpages, mailings, processing eCRV’s, various assessment applications, and tax abatements.
I’m responsible for everything with our Cama system; including releases, beta testing, report creation, downloading sales data from the MN Department of Revenue, and data extraction. Because our Cama and Tax systems interface I often run reports to verify both systems are in sync.
I do an ongoing review of our data to ensure we have timely and accurate submissions for PRISM and homestead files. I work closely with our print vendor and create/proof our files for value notices. I review and update all of our public utilities and railroad values presented to us from the MN Department of Revenue. I do a thorough review of the assessment before it is finalized and turned over for tax calculation and billing. Our annual report is a huge project I work on each year and I’ve created a template with formulas to pull most of the data from our PRISM submission. I am the SharePoint administrator for our department as well as our extranet site with partners and create/edit the site as our needs change.
What interests you about MnCCC?
The relationships I’ve created over the years are invaluable! I really appreciate the coordination of efforts when there are legislative changes to be sure that we all fully understand the requirements and that the changes to programming meet the requirements. It’s nice to have relationships with counterparts at other counties on the same software to help with any questions we may have about processes.
What is something on your bucket list?
To cross the border to Canada, again. My family went to Canada when I was young but the focus was only on fishing. We’ve been at the border in a few different places in the last 5 years and what we could see was so beautiful, we want to see more. We now have the right driver’s license to get us back and forth so hopefully we’ll make it happen soon.