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Sonoma County, a diverse county of over one million acres, is famed for its agriculture, industry and recreation, boasting a booming economy and unique lifestyle for its citizens. Described by the same Luther Burbank as the chosen spot of all the Earth, Sonoma County is the place to

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live, work and play as we move into the 21st century. Led by the forward looking philosophy of its governing bodies, Cinema Counties, 340,000 residents are, Ah, harmonious, successful blend of ethnic and economic backgrounds. We invite you to take a closer look at Sonoma County in the

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nineties with your host Rich McGlinchy. Hello again, everybody. Welcome to another edition of Sonoma County in the nineties. I'm rich progression your host, and we're gonna be talking to a gentleman who has pretty pronounced effect on yours and mine life. We're gonna be talking to James

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or, as we call him, Jim Gallagher. He's our elected Sonoma County assessor. Jim was, incidentally, by way of background. Elected in 1986 to his first term in Sonoma County assessor and then in 1990 was re elected to the office without opposition. That's always a key factor

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for anyone who is running for office. Political office. Jim, it's nice to have you back. You visited with us about a year ago, I think. Yes. Rich. Yeah. It's too bad. As I said to you when we were talking before the show, I really like to

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visit with you at least once a year to see what's happening in the assessment practice field and with the assessor. Ah, you've been with us. Now, That's your fifth of 60 year, isn't it? Yes. Yeah. All right. I guess for the audience that might not have

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been with us in our previous programs. We already asked you this question. What does the assessor and the assessor's office do? Well, the assessor's office is mandated by state Constitution to locate and identify and assess all taxable property within its jurisdiction. And in our case, it

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is Sonoma County and that includes buildings, lands, airplanes, boats and businesses. We have to assess the horses, uh, horses, race horses, right? If you have one, you want to come out, See? Um, Okay. You will praise all these things in a system. How do you establish

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the value? Well, we take a look at the market, and, ah, when we reappraise the house, it's usually now based on whenever there's new construction or a change of ownership. We look to the market value, and then we put the market on there and we analyze

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it. And I'd say between 95 98% of the properties that change hands, that would be the assessment that goes on their property. There's a small minority that maybe kind of a questionable sale. Maybe parents gave to their Children, or I shouldn't use that as an example,

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or maybe some family transaction where somebody said, I'll give you a good deal. Well, we have to disregard what the value was there, and we have to go to the market and find out what should really be on that house. And that's the assessment we use.

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Jim, who actually established value? Well, it's It's actually the people in the marketplace, the people that are buying properties. We take a look at what selling say, if you had a home and there was a change of ownership on it and there was some question to

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the value, we'd go around your neighborhood and see if there was some similar houses. And based on what people have paid for those houses, that's the value we put on your house. So it's really the people in the marketplace. Decide that. Okay, so you place this

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assessed value on the property. Now, what if I disagree with your assessment and I know many, many property owners dio But what rights do I have as a taxpayer? If I do disagree? Okay, you do have rights to get the value changed. We encourage you to

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come on in and talk to us. And you know your file is open. We'd be happy to show you how we arrived at your value. In many times, there'll be something about the house. When we maybe did the inspection, we couldn't get in. And maybe there'll

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be a problem that we don't know about. So we encourage you to come in and tell us about that. And then we'd make whatever adjustments were necessary. And if after you came in and we discussed and we told you while we use this sale, that sale

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and whatever, you still weren't satisfied, then you have the right to go to the Sonoma County Assessment Appeals Board. It's a very informal procedure. You don't have to worry about it or get a lawyer. I mean, you could bring a lawyer if you're more comfortable, but

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we've got retired to see p a. A property manager and a lawyer on the board at this time. So the property owner just comes in and presents his evidence why? He thinks his value should be different than what the assessor has. And then the assessor presents

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his information. And then the board analyzes both sets of information and comes up with a value and determines what they think it should be should be on the property. If the property owner still disagrees with that value, they still have the right to go on to

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superior court and challenges further. So there are some rights in there, but we would encourage people to come on in and talk to us first. Keep that in mind the gentleman that if you do disagree with the assessment and you feel is you have a valid

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disagreement, uh, you contact the assessor's office first and talk with them and they will show you how they arrive at that, and then you have the other recourse the gym just described. Now, June, I've read the property values have declined in summaries of Sonoma County. If

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this is true, does this have any effect on my assessment and my taxes? Well, it could result in a reduction in your taxes. Unfortunately, while it's kind of happened all over California, but people who have purchased their house since about 1989 I have experienced in many

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areas about a 10% decline. Now there are provisions in the law, and this this has had a dramatic effect on our assessment Roll, our assessment roll have been going up about 10 12 13% a year. This year it only went up about 6.5%. So it was

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quite a decline, and some of that was the result of some of the work that we did. There are provisions in the law that allow us to take a look at values. So if we had an assessment on the roll, that's a was $300,000 well, let's

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give an example. Say that a lady bought a house in July of 1989 for $300,000 and now we're finding in 1992 that the same houses they're selling for $250,000. The law allows us to go in and reduce her assessment, and so we'd bring it down to

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$250,000. And that's saver about $500 year on taxes. So once we do that, we have to look at it every year to determine if her value has come back up. So if the economy turns around or when it turns around, let's be more positive and the

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value start climbing, and we find that houses in her neighborhood are once again selling for 300,000 or more than we would put her value back. If this took two or three years, she would have her $300,000 base. Plus, we'd have to add the two percents that

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Jarvis scanner Prop. 13 allowed so that that's what it is. But people you know, it has impacted the county. But I would encourage anybody that feels that they're aware of any sales in their neighborhood of houses similar to theirs that are selling for less than what's

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on their assessment of their tax bill to give us a call and we'd be happy toe do a review on their property. What? No, considering everything you just said. How high can my assessment go after property values go back up? We can't go above that base.

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Let's say that this lady who did pay 300 originally we lowered it to 2 50 all of a sudden things skyrocketed and maybe houses similar to hers were selling for $400,000. We would not go to the fore. We would only go to the 300,000 plus whatever

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2% increments were in there under normal circumstances. So it's a win win situation for people that really is very, very fair. No other. Are there any other property tax relief programs available to taxpayers? Now there are a number of them rich, and some of them have

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to deal with seniors. If you're over 62 on a limited income, you can actually postpone your taxes and what happens there? The state puts a lien on your house, and then they reimburse the county for the lost taxes. And when you sell the house or if

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you die and it goes into an estate than the state picks up the back taxes. There's another program that if you're on a limited income and you're over 62 again, you can get a portion of your taxes back. So if you're at a certain level, you

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might get 50 or 80% of your taxes back. So so that's a good program that's actually administered by the state. But we have all of brochures and pamphlets available in our office, and we'd be happy to send them out. What you just said is something everybody

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or listen very terrible, right? You, Yeah, talk 60 80% possible relief in some cases, Yeah, so, yeah, I encourage people who you know are having a hard time to take a look at that because it's available. Some of the other things that are available are parent

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child transfer, exclusion and what happens there. If, say, parents give a house to their Children, or if the parents die and the house transfers into the Children's name, they are excluded from reappraisal. It's not considered a regular change of ownership so parents can give to Children

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or Children can give to parents, and then we won't reappraise it the original tax base stays on the property. That's great, right? It only It not only applies to the original residents, but it applies to up to a $1,000,000 with property. So it's one of these

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things that started out to just help parents and Children. And then somehow it escalated. $2 million. One thing I might throw in there I hadn't experienced a short time ago where we had a grandmother will use the whole scenario. Graham grandmother wanted to give uh property

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to her daughter, and they were both elderly. And the daughter said, Well, I really don't want to keep the ranch up. Why don't you give it to my daughter? So it would have been granddaughter to daughter granddaughter change that is not included. So I would recommend

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Teoh anybody that's thinking of that give the property from the grandmother to the daughter and then immediately give it to the granddaughter. But go that extra step because then we always have a parent child. So that's something. Another thing that we have is a replacement residence

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exclusion. Now that applies to anybody that's over 55. There isn't any income qualifications or anything like that. But if you want to sell one house and moved to another house within the county, you can do that. You have to move to a house of equal or

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lesser value, and you can take your old tax base with you so you can move into, say, maybe a smaller house than you had when you had a large family and still keep paying your original small taxes or low taxes. We have exemptions for disabled veterans

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theme. Normal exemption is $100,000 that will come off of your tax base. And they've added another provisioned this last year. That would raise the exemption $250,000 if you're income is under $24,000. So so Those are two things we have to look, and we have all the

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forms for that. And then again, we have the property value declined, provisioned, and that's what we talked about earlier of property values go down, we can reduce those, and then also there's disaster provisions. If your house burns down or you're in a flood, weaken lower the

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value temporarily till you put the house back in shape. And then there's also an exclusion. If you're building a house, if you're a builder, something like that, you sign an exclusion form and then we can give you a break on your taxes until you sell the

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house. And the motivation for that was so we could lower the cost to the builder of providing housing, and then he hopefully would pass that on to the buyer. So those air distinctions airways of reducing your of your taxes. I have also heard it. Some companies

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are offering to obtain some kind of an assessment exemption for a fee right now. What's this all about? Yeah, that's unfortunate. There's a company that's working out as Chicago, and they've done some mass mailings to six counties in California and what they do, they say, We'll

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get you a homeowner's exemption. If you give us $35 fill out this form well, nobody should have to pay money for their homeowners. All you have to do is contact our office and it's there's no charge, and we'll give you a homeowner's exemption. Now. Anybody that

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owns and occupies Ah house as the principal residence on March 1st is entitled to a homeowners, and we always send out whenever there's a change of ownership or new construction. New House, I should say, form an application for homeowners. Now, many times people are busy, they've

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just moved in the house or whatever, and they put it aside and don't file. So I would encourage anybody to look at their tax bill. Tax bills have it right on there. It shows homeowners exemption. And if you don't see a $7000 exclusion there, then give

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us a call because you may have either not gotten the notice or forgot to send it in. And you don't get on this thing from No, by all means. Don't don't pay anybody $35 to get something for free. What happened? Yeah, we're gonna pause right here

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for a moment, and, uh, I have a message for the audience in just a moment. Jim Gallagher, the Sonoma County assessor, and I returned. We'll talk more about assessment and tax savings and all these other interesting factors that come from the assessor's office. First, This pause.

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Every year, Americans throw away 25 billion poly styrene cubs. $1 out of every $10 we spend on food pays for packaging. Less than 1% of the plastic we use is recycled every year. We throw out enough office writing paper to build a wall 12 feet high

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stretching from Los Angeles to New York City. Fast stuff this recycle. Recycle the stuff you buy, Jake it back. Preserved the beauty of Sonoma County by taking part in the fourth annual Christmas Tree collection. Remove all decorations, tinsel and stands. Disposing of your Christmas tree should

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become a part of your holiday tradition from January 11 through the 15th. Curbside collection is available on your regular trash pickup day, and from December 28 through January 18th you can deliver your tree to the Santa Rosa Corporation Yard. For more information, call the ICO desk

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a 575 36 100 right. Welcome back to this edition of cinema Can in the nineties were talking to James or, as we call him, Jim Gallagher, Sonoma County assessor who has been our assessors. 1986. He was elected 86 re elected in 1990 without opposition, which all

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political figures are very, very proud of, Uh, Jim, we were talking about a whole lot of things early on some of the things that people could use to reduction to reduce their taxes will touch on that a little later. But how about businesses? Do you folks

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and assess the businesses to? Yes, we do. We actually assess the business equipment, and we review about 18,000 businesses each year. And we send a questionnaire out to the businesses each year and ask him what kind of equipment they have. And then based on that, we

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establish an assessment for the business equipment like that personal property type. Yes. Yeah, sometimes personal property. I didn't get the names of the businesses. Uh, and besides, that what you said you don't see in what you assess. Okay, uh, we get we get the names from

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the State Board of Equalization if somebody takes out a licensed operated business. And then we also get a list of the names from the city's when people file for city license and we also look at business publications. And on occasion, we've even used the phone book

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is a resource to find out who's in business. And what we look at is everything from desks, chairs, computers, manufacturing equipment, even wine tanks. They used in the wine industry. So it's anything that you used to run your business. Yeah, right. The form that that you

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use for that. Rather complicated. Yes, it looks kind of complicated. Here. Here, there's a business owner need an accountant to complete the form. Well, they have that option. They could do that. But they really don't. Although it's a terrible form, we would like to revise it

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and make it simple. It is a state man that he dated form in. All assessors have to use this form what we've done to try and alleviate some of the confusion around the form we put on seminars for businesses or accountants or CPS very in the

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fall, just before a tax season, we put on three or four year, and with that, we invite people in its free seminar. It takes about three hours, and we invite people to come in and we go through the form step by step and advise them how

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to fill out the form in the manner that will give them the best tax break that they possibly can. That form we're talking about right now, when does that have to be filed? That has to be filed on April 1st. We mail them out around February.

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So when people have their books open for their income tax, it'd be handy to just do that. Some of the other things that we do in the business property section we mentioned earlier some of our duties we as well as the 18,000 businesses that we review.

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We look at approximately 5000 boats in about 1000 airplanes here in the county also keeps us pretty busy. Jim agriculture is such an important part of Sonoma County. Is there anything the assessor's office conduce to help the agriculturalists? Yes, and I'm very supportive of agriculture myself.

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We have ah program, and it came in about 1968 1970. It's called the eight Preserved Program, where they're Williamson Act, and if somebody agrees to keep their property in agriculture for 10 years, they will get a tax break. We are allowed to value them not on

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what the property would sell for, but on the income that the properties produce. So there's a substantial savings there, but again, they have to agree to be in agriculture. For 10 years we've got about I'd say 2000 contracts in the county, now about 28% of our

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total land areas and egg preserved. And last year we estimate that it to reduce the assessment on agricultural land about $329 million to be in the program. So it's it's been very beneficial to them. You know, another thing comes in considering agriculture. We've heard a lot

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about bollocks arrived it ISS and destroying vineyards supposedly in the county, maybe Napa County. Now, if that's true, can you do anything to help the great Boehner's right And we are about to get into that right now. We're gonna put together, in effect, a couple of

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these provisions I mentioned earlier the disaster provisional because it's regarded as a disaster and what we will be doing will be sending out questionnaires to all the vineyard owners asking them if they had infestation and when they pull out vines, we will take those off the

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tax rule. And there's just been legislation passed that would allow us to when those fines, if they re plan and their new violence come on, we'll be able to put back the old value on there so they have to meet certain qualifications, and we'd be happy

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to go over there, you to break it. They get a break pretty much, and hopefully this will help encourage people that put the vines back in because it's very costly to redo it. But they won't have to worry about taxes for four years while they're waiting

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for production again. Another thing I know that you do is that you assess mobile homes, accessories offices. Now if if I'm not mistaken, you've recently proposed are kind of a tax saving procedure for some mobile home owners. Maybe even talk about that. Okay, what we did.

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Well, as you're probably aware the last couple of years, Governor Wilson has been trying to eliminate the renter's credit. While many of the mobile home owners own their own home, our mobile home within a park so over the last well, for years we've encouraged them to

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take the renter's credit because it was worth more to them than the homeowners exemption. But now that we find out well anyway, he didn't get the renter's credit eliminated completely. But as kind of a compromise, the Legislature put a cap on your income so what they're

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saying. If you make, if you're single person, you make over $20,000. Then you can't get your renter's credit. Well, we went through our files and we tried to analyze. You know what mobile home owners might qualify for homes. So we figured that out, and we mailed

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out over 1100 letters to the what we felt were qualified mobile home owners, encouraging them to file for homeowners exemption now. So if you lost your renter's credit, if you're a single person and your income was over 20 or if you were couple and your income

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was over $40,000 then in the well that you could get a homeowner's exemption so you'd save about $70 a year. So the state took away the renter's credit, and in turn, they, uh, allowed us to give the homeowners exemption kind of an interesting quirk. Yeah, the

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state reimburses the county for the homeless exemption, so they're still picking anyway. So we made that available to the homeowners where their mobile home owners, we felt that this was an opportunity for them to take advantage of this. One of the things Jim, I know you've

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done. You visited with us before and you've really taken it to heart. Three idea of trying to help the taxpayer instead of being a bureaucracy. You've actually been there. And I know many people have come in here and I've been told that and you've shown them

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ways that they could save money to the detriment of the revenue producing factor. But it was a gentleman, right to which they're entitled. You saw to it that they knew about it. And I commend you. And I'm sure those watching us now Dio thank you got

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a true three more things. That brief amount of time here. Now we know that you assess property to generate revenue and the infirm eight programs for for well, in order to save taxpayers money. I guess we are there Any other services that the office provide? Yes,

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we do with the assessor's office is a wealth of information. We've got the name of every property owner in the county. We've got maps of all the parcels of anybody wanted to come in and look at that. We also have a transfer journal available. If somebody's

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looking to buy a house, they can come in and take a look at what houses in the neighborhood that they're looking at buying. And then so you get an idea of what, what houses? Air worth. We also have, ah, well made. It made available this brochure

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that we talked about earlier that goes out with any any D that's mailed out. We've made arrangements with the recorder to have that sent outs. Everybody's aware that if if somebody's had their house for a long time and they like one of those, just give us

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a call, we'll make sure we get it. Ah, then we've also made information available Teoh MLS Multiple listing service to assist the Realtors and doing proper listings and things like that. And we also sell Date it to some other information services that generates revenue for the

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county in our office, and we put that into, ah, fund that will allow us to make more information available to the public someday. We hope to have ah dialling system where people can just call in and get information via computers. All these things Jim are in

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keeping what I said. I'm gonna go and offering my congratulations. It does appear that you've developed assessor's office that it has a different attitude as faras, the taxpayers concerned. And, uh, from what most taxpayers have learned to expect. Now you go back about five or six

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years. There is the tournament office. How you accomplished this. Well, I've got an exceptional staff and they were very responsive. Many of us who worked in the office even before I took office were always there to help the taxpayer. But But I said that as their

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main priority service to the taxpayers is what we're here to do. I mean, we have to produce an assessment roll, but the taxpayer is paying our salary. And I told our people, You know, if you have to spend five or 10 or 30 minutes with the

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taxpayer to explain what we're doing, so they understand it, you're still going to get your paycheck. You know, it's the same as if you're out there bringing in revenue. So we kind of have a philosophy that we want to be the exception to government service. People

00:26:16.600 - 00:26:29.720

always think they get put off on that, and I get a lot of positive response from taxpayers that our people have taken the time to explain. They've gone out of their way and you know, things like even putting on these seminars and putting up brochures. You

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know, people appreciate that. And I think we owe it to the people. So, um, and my staff going with that And you know, the other thing that the attitude you're speaking of right here prevails throughout your office. I go in and out of there and I

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have people talking to me about it. And everybody seems to be following the boss's idea that we are there to serve the taxpayer, try to help them, um, get a couple of things here has as the slowdown, a real estate activity affected the office it has.

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It's interesting on our new construction and our sales, it's slowed down appraisals. But another part of my office that the work is actually increased. We've seen so many a living trust created. And whenever there created, we have to change the name and do a lot of

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paperwork. So the world has kind of shifted from one division to another, and I've talked to some realtor groups, and I said the commission's that you used to make are now being made by the lawyers and the financial planners who are setting up the living trust

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so that that's kept us busy. And, you know, we still have a number of subdivision just being well and then the proper way. Say profits. But the decline in value, you know, that's properties we have to review. So our work has been pretty consistent. Pretty study.

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We're down to about a minute, and Supreme Court upheld properties in 13 recently. What's your feeling about that? I was happy that they upheld it. I like the A certainty of taxation. I was a little worried because of this. The situation with state budget. I thought,

00:28:03.510 - 00:28:19.110

if the Supreme Court does overthrow it and will give the Legislature carte blanche to increase taxes. But, you know, I like that I like the aspect that we can stay in our house. We have some guarantee, but, uh, you know, we have to look at the

00:28:19.110 - 00:28:31.970

people lead that have bought recently. Only 20% of our population still has a 75 base year, so I think we need we need the protection of prop their team, but we may have to modify it somewhat Yeah, we have to live with it. And it's just

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many, many good factors and some not so good. Thanks. Thanks for it. My pleasure, gentlemen. We've been talking to you, James Jim Gallagher, this Sonoma County assessor with five or six years, like in 86 you get a 90 without our profession. Of which every crowd howling

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back with your next week. Another member of the kind of government, family or related agency until then. Good night. Good luck than good health. Eight, everyone, no!