Longtime Douglas County Appraiser Marion Johnson will retire this summer — leaving behind a job that he said he enjoyed, even if county residents didn’t always enjoy the news he had to deliver.

“I understand that nobody likes to pay taxes,” Johnson said. “But I’ve always thought that if we do our job right, that everybody will pay their fair share and nobody will have a heavier burden than anybody else.”

Johnson, who has served as Douglas County appraiser for the last 18 years, announced on Wednesday that he will retire June 12. Johnson and his staff of 13 are responsible for determining a fair market value for all 40,000 pieces of property in the county.

Those property values are then used to determine how much property tax individuals and businesses owe.

Douglas County Administrator Craig Weinaug said he would conduct a wide search to fill the position, but also said he would consider candidates within the department. Weinaug said he didn’t have a timeline for making a hire.

Weinaug praised the work of Johnson, saying he was regarded by his peers as one of the top appraisers in the country.

“He’s a humble, soft-spoken guy who does a job that everyone knows needs to be done, but it is also one of those jobs that you never get praised when you do the job well,” Weinaug said.

Johnson, who recently served as the president of the international association for the assessing industry, came to Douglas County in 1991 after serving as an appraiser in McPherson County and a county clerk and appraiser in Linn County.

Johnson, 57, said he plans to do some teaching and consulting work, and spend more time with his family — which includes eight grandchildren, with four more on the way.

Johnson praised his staff, and also said he would miss working with the public. Johnson said the current downturn in the housing market, which has caused him to lower many housing values for the first time in his Douglas County tenure, wasn’t a factor in his decision. He said he knows members of the public sometimes think he’s under pressure to place values at a certain level to appease government leaders who want the values to be high for budget purposes.

“That’s really not how it works,” Johnson said. “Never once has any county commissioner or any county administrator talked to me about what the values need to be or what tax revenues need to be. We’re just trying to estimate what property will sell for, and I really feel like my staff has done a good job of that.”