by Steve Timmer

Jan 14, 2025, 9:00 AM

Elizabeth Ross was wrong

Edina resident and former ad agency executive Elizabeth Ross penned a poisonous, and I believe libelous, letter that appeared in the Edina Sun Current on December 19, 2024. The letter was an accusation that long-time mayor Jim Hovland and then first-term council member Carolyn Jackson (she won election to another term in November) received preferential treatment in the value assessment of their homes by the city’s assessing staff. The letter was false in multiple respects. I have more to say about the Ross smear, but first, here’s my response which was published on the Sun Current website on January 9, 2025.

In a letter published on December 19th complaining about property taxes in Edina, Elizabeth Ross alleged that Mayor Jim Hovland and Councilmember Carolyn Jackson benefitted from the undervaluation of their homes.

She says that the mayor’s home is valued 32% less than his neighbors and that Jackson’s home has “averaged a paltry 2.65% change” since 2018.

Ross recounts this as “unsurprising.”

Ross may have meant per year assessment increase in her assertion about Jackson’s residence, but the letter doesn’t say that. Carolyn Jackson wasn’t on the council in 2018; she didn’t join it until 2021, three years later. But never mind, the assertion is false: during Jackson’s first term on the council, the assessed value of her home rose about 20%. These facts and numbers are surpassingly easy to check, by Ross or the Sun Current.

Properties are not just assessed by neighborhood. Residents know that many factors affect a home’s assessment: lot size, the dwelling size, its age, improvements made, and surrounding development are some of them. Recent high-value redevelopment can drive the value of an older home toward the lot price.

Ross writes that Hovland and Jackson benefitted from low valuations while “newer council members,” including James Pierce, did not. Carolyn Jackson and James Pierce were sworn in to the council for the first time on the same day in 2021. Again, it’s a fact that is surpassingly easy to check. Falsus in uno; falsus in omnibus.

Without knowledge of the facts of these assessments, and appraisals and assessor files in hand, Ross’s comments in her letter were, I believe, reckless and malicious. They have damaged the reputations of Mayor Hovland and Councilmember Jackson, and staff in the city’s assessor office, as well. Ross touted her letter on local social media, and it is aflame with republication of Ross’ remarks and with claims of criminality by Hovland and Jackson, which Ross has not, to my knowledge, repudiated.

The truth demands that Elizabeth Ross publicly retract her letter, and the Sun Current retract the republication of it.

The backdrop for Ross’ liverish tantrum is the municipal election last November. Liz Ross is a member in good standing of a rump group of malcontents who believe that Edina’s AAA bond rating and exceptional municipal services are just a cover for rot and corruption and that Edina should strive to be some other place. They thought that Jim Hovland (who won a fifth term) and, especially, Carolyn Jackson (who won her second term) should have been tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail.

The thing is, the voters didn’t agree with them. The candidate that groups like Common Sense for Edina (“common sense” in a name is always a tip-off; it’s been seriously devalued since Tom Paine used it some years ago, although Tom had his crackpot moments, too) touted for mayor, Ron Anderson, was the silver medalist in the race, by a ten-point margin. Anderson is a former member of the Edina City Council who was cashiered by the voters in 2022.

The very best part of the Edina election, though, was the council race. Carolyn Jackson got more votes, 16,552, than any other candidate for the council in Edina’s history. By at least a couple of thousand votes. (Okay, I only went back to 2008, but I make the statements without serious fear of contradiction.) By contrast, the callow lightweight Ryan Daye, pushed hard by Common Sense for Edina, was the bronze medalist in a three-candidate race (for two council seats).

Jackson got almost 2,700 more votes – in a three-way race for council – than Ron Anderson did in his two-way race for mayor. Jackson won every precinct in the city.

In other words, the malcontents got shellacked and their campaign of bile and invective against Jim Hovland and Carolyn Jackson flopped spectacularly.

If you want to know what possessed – I use the word with intention – Elizabeth Ross to write her untruthful smear in the Sun Current, well, I just explained it to you. Spirited political debate is one thing; untruthful character assassination is quite another.