Assessments skyrocket for some residents
Some Lake County property owners saw increases as high as 80 to 90% from previous year
LAKE COUNTY >> Right before this past Halloween holiday a number of property owners in Lake County received a huge scare in the mail but it had nothing to do with ghosts, witches or goblins, rather with the assessment of their annual property taxes which for some shot up by as much as 80 to 90 percent from the previous year.
Confusion and misunderstanding were in order on social media networks as the December 10 property tax “past due” date approached, (property taxes were officially due on November 1) while a number of residents took to the web to try and piece together why their assessment appeared to have (in some cases) doubled since last year or the previous year and with some wondering why they were not given “more of a heads up by county officials” over the significant increases, especially with a payment deadline looming. Still others marched down to the Assessor’s Office at the Courthouse in Lakeport to investigate matters further.
“I’ve known for sometime that my property was under assessed,” said Kelseyville resident Judith Stelljes, a homeowner in the county since 2006 who said she was initially shocked to discover her bill was over twice the amount than the previous year. Stelljes said she subsequently discovered, just like a number of her neighbors who turned to the assessor’s office for answers, that because that office had been understaffed, they were unable to value properties properly in the past. A number of residents reported that they were informed that if they applied for a tax reduction as a result of the 2008 property values dropping, the County is now bringing them back up to speed.
This was confirmed by Lake County Assessor-Recorder Richard Ford who stated that for more than 10 years, (in some cases 10 to a dozen) a whole group of people in the county (amounting to about 1,000 parcels out of about approximately 65,000) qualified and were placed under Proposition 8, which allows for temporary reductions in assessed value in cases where a property suffers a decline in value.
Ford also stated that adequate amounts of staffing in a department he has overseen since 2015 would not have changed current state law. He added that the California Legislature would have to revise and provide a provision in the R&T (Revenue and Taxation code) for hardship in order to address some residents’ circumstances such as fixed income status. “They need to provide a vehicle towards a hardship exemption,” he said above a list of exemptions currently in the books.
Now retired, Stelljes added that she has previously worked for the County in three different stages of her life and she is well aware that they often don’t have adequate supplies or the manpower at various departments. “But it’s not my fault that the County did not have proper staffing,” she said.
She wrote to her neighbors on social media in order to gauge the local impact and stated that under “Value Description” her “structural improvements” increased by 125% which, when using that new value as the base for school, bug abatement, and fire, “skyrocketed them, too.” Her 2020 assessment was $1,554 and increased to $3,235.
She isn’t alone, a quick glimpse at a property in the Kelseyville Riviera area of the county which originally sold for $236,000 just two years ago and is now estimated online to be worth over $313,000 saw an increase of nearly 88 percent from 2019 to 2020 according to online real estate records. Some local realtors were at a loss to explain where some tax assessments for “local agencies” were going, other than the standard assessments benefitting local school districts and fire districts.
A property .15 acres in size for a property in Kelseyville for example, was assessed for high school school bonds and the Mendocino Community College bond as well as relatively minimal assessments for Vector Control District and Fire District taxes, which is typical for the annual assessment.
However, another resident who also lives in the Clearlake Riviera and said she is on a fixed income but chose to remain anonymous. She said she was outraged that her assessment increased over $2,500 from the previous year and was not at all happy to receive a letter in late October stating taxes were due on November 1, when in previous years it had been due in December, giving her less that a week to pay.
“It feels as if they backed up the truck and dumped it on me all at once.” Stelljes said, adding that she was astonished that increases were not slowly adjusted. “Having this tremendous increase all at once is stupefying, all of a sudden it feels like I’m buying my house all over again.”
According to information made publicly available by the Sacramento Assessors Office, California’s Proposition 13 (passed in 1978) caps the growth of a property’s assessed value at no more than 2 percent a year, unless the market value of a property falls lower. When that happens, Proposition 8, which passed the same year, allows the property to be temporarily assessed at the lower value.
According to the California State Board of Equalization website, (linked from Lake County’s website) under a section entitled “decline in value Proposition 8,” once a property’s assessment has been reduced under the proposition, the assessor reviews the assessment annually to determine whether it should remain in decline-in-value status. The assessed value of a property in decline-in-value status may increase each lien date (January 1) by more than the standard two percent maximum allowed for properties assessed under Proposition 13. Such was the case in Lake County.
“Us being behind we should have made up taxes a number of years ago,” said Ford in reference to Lake County, adding that the Assessor’s Office acknowledges it’s bad timing for properties to be coming off the temporary reductions in assessed value under Proposition 8 during COVID, assessments which had previously benefited property owners for a number of years, but the County cannot afford to fall further behind. “If we don’t do it and catch up schools and other resources will suffer.”
Ford added that he is an advocate for applying the R&T in a fair manner for everybody. “We have a back and forth similar to the IRS, where one rule giveth and one taketh away,” he said adding that since the property tax codes can be big and gangly, he urges residents to come to the Assessor’s Office to clarify their specific individual situation and to seek help if they need it. The office can also provide residents with information on property tax postponement given to senior and disabled citizens who qualify.
Timothy Toye, a local realtor with Timothy Toye and Associates said the hike has taken people by surprise. “It’s unfortunate, it would have been smart for the assessor to communicate with people ahead of time. I think the Assessor’s Office would do well to relate to the tax payers as customers.” Toye said realtors tried to get some information on the reasons for the increases so they could better communicate with their customers. “One thing I can say is that house prices have gone up over this last year in Lake County.”
“This sudden assault is really difficult to swallow,” said Stelljes, who is over 75 years old and who said she worries the economy is pricing her out of her house. “It would have been very humanistic of them to give us a clue, instead of asking for twice as much all at once.” She added that for the last five years, Lake County residents been in tremendous turmoil dealing with multiple fire emergencies and now COVID.
Ford retorted that is not an entirely accurate analysis of this year’s assessment. “Percentage wise, people like to separate the math into weird contexts,” Ford said, meaning some property owners maybe have been fortunate to have a big recession hit right after they bought their homes triggering the Property 8 reductions. “This resulted in a great benefit to all those property owners for an extended period of time.” Ford said it is also fair to bring up the assessment up to the current market value which benefits schools who tend to be the biggest recipients of property taxes, in the 60 to 70 percent range out of every dollar.