Meet the Butte County assessor candidates: Randall Stone
Randall Stone has built his entire career on understanding finances, the housing market and government.
The former Chico mayor has 20 years of experience in planning and real estate and hopes to bring his knowledge and background into the seat of Butte County assessor.
“I’ve been in the real estate business for the last 20 years,” Stone said. “I’ve owned and operated my own financial planning firm as well as an affordable housing developer in the state of California and ran a real estate brokerage for the better part of those 20 years.”
During that same time, Stone has overseen three to 250 employees. On top of his career in the private sector, Stone has eight years under his belt as a member of the Chico City Council and mayor of the city.
Stone’s education roots in public administration.
“I have a master’s degree with distinction from (Chico State) in public administration with a specific emphasis on housing and real estate,” Stone said. “So this is what I’ve studied, this is what I’ve done my entire professional career.”
Stone said he has garnered support from both sides of the political aisle and wants to bring positive change to the position of assessor.
“This is about making sure that we’re fair and accurate and treating taxpayers fairly,” Stone said. “And we’re not doing that now. We’re falling short of that.”
One of Stone’s primary concerns is the lack of big business auditing throughout Butte County. He said it’s been a decade since the Assessor’s Office has done so.
“So when you think about the fiscal impact that has on our taxing entities in our special districts or school districts as well as the county itself and all of the individual cities, we know there’s a quantifiable number of how much revenue we’re leaving on the table.”
Stone said he would like to see more communication between the Assessor’s Office and municipal jurisdictions such as Butte County and the city governments within.
“What we don’t do now at the Assessor’s Office is work with those stakeholders,” Stone said. “I can remember vividly as mayor and councilman for those eight years trying to determine what our revenue circumstances we were going to be at the city and what we weren’t hearing from and what we should be doing are hearing from the Assessor’s Office on what that fiscal impact is going to be throughout the year.”
Stone is running for Butte County Assessor against Alyssa Douglass and Michael Howard. The election will be on the June 7 ballot.