Blog note: this article cites two grand jury reports as contributing factors to a person running for office.
A man who played an active role in Butte Fire recovery work as a representative of the Calaveras Association of Realtors charity will run for the county assessor’s office.
Tim Muetterties, who started a local charity supported by local real estate agents in 2002, said it is time for new leadership at the Calaveras County Assessor’s Office. He is challenging incumbent Leslie Davis, who is seeking to be re-elected to the office she has held since she was appointed acting assessor in 2009 when her predecessor retired.
Muetterties started the Calaveras County Association of Realtors housing affordability fund in 2002 as the local arm of a statewide program initiated by the California Association of Realtors. Through that fund, the Calaveras Association of Realtors played a role in fixing septic systems and providing trailers to victims of the Butte Fire.
Muetterties said recently that local Realtors have been busy allocating a $50,000 stipend from state Realtors for permit fees required by Butte Fire victims for rebuilding.
Muetterties has been a county resident, primarily in District 3, for the past 47 years. He went to Hazel Fischer Elementary School when it was located at Independence Hall in Arnold, before he attended Bret Harte High School. He spent four years in the Central Valley before returning to the county.
He has been a Realtor since he was 19, working mostly six-day weeks with the occasional Sunday off when time allows. He owns Realty World Tim Muetterties & Associates in Arnold.
Muetterties is married to Calaveras County Planning Commissioner Lisa Muetterties, whose term on the Calaveras County Planning Commission expires at the end of this year.
¬Muetterties cited investigations of complaints involving the Assessor’s Office by the 2011-12 and 2016-17 grand juries as contributing factors leading to his decision to run for the elected position. An investigation of the Assessor’s Office was undertaken as part of the 2011-12 grand jury’s work in response to a citizen complaint of a possible violation of the Revenue and Taxation Code. The 2011-12 grand jury report made two findings: First, that the county lost as much as $500,000 because the assessor waived or did not apply tax penalties properly. The tax code calls for assessment of a 10 percent penalty for late payments. Second, the grand jury found that the assessor “decided not to support the Unsecured Personal Property Tax Roll” because of budget reductions, and that decision put county schools at risk of losing $600,000 in a year and the county at risk of losing $178,000. Among its recommendations, the 2011-12 grand jury also recommended that the “Board of Supervisors provide funding to the Assessor’s Office to staff the revenue-generating functions.
As is customary, the grand jury report for 2011-12 also asked the Board of Supervisors, the county administrator and the assessor to respond to its findings in the next year’s report for the period 2012-13. The 2012-13 report noted in in responses that the Assessor’s Office staff had been cut nearly by half in 2011, from 19 positions and two extra hires to 11 total staffers, without any reduction in the workload of the office.
The county administrator and Board of Supervisors responded that the threat of lost tax revenues had been avoided under an arrangement whereby other county personnel were assigned to assist the remaining staff of the Assessor’s Office in completing the necessary tasks to support the tax rolls. The response of the Board of Supervisors also stated that the grand jury estimate that the loss of tax penalties may have been as much as $500,000 per year for 2010 and 2011 “is grossly overstated and inaccurate.” The assessor responded that tax penalties were, in fact, assessed in 533 cases for 2010, although no penalties were assessed with respect to the unsecured roll in 2011. That response also stated that all penalties were “applied for the 2012 assessment roll, including the unsecured roll” after the grand jury recommendations were implemented.
The response from the County Administrative Office stated that “Despite serious fiscal and budgetary constraints in fiscal year 2011-12, the Board of Supervisors took action to increase funding in the Assessor’s Office, thereby implementing the grand jury’s recommendation.”
In 2016-17, the grand jury again considered a citizen complaint that the Assessor’s Office had failed to diligently assess property taxes. In response to that complaint, the report asked the same parties to respond as they had in 2011-12.
The 2016-17 grand jury report did not find any wrongdoing or negligence by the Assessor’s Office with respect to the specific property assessment identified in the citizen complaint, but it did report a “significant backlog” of assessment work and identified a number of factors that may have contributed to that backlog. Those factors included the aftermath of the Butte Fire that required reassessments for all properties within its boundaries, the difficulty of identifying property owners, the learning curve for new hires, out-of-date computer systems and software that constrained the efficiency of the office, and a “silo mentality” that prevented county departments from sharing information with each other that could improve overall efficiency. Among its recommendations, the grand jury urged the county to “develop a comprehensive staffing and work methods analysis … consider greater use of modernized and integrated computer solutions … and establish a formal taskforce … to address technological needs … and develop a formal short-term and multiyear plan … .”
Formal written responses to the 2016-17 grand jury report will not be disclosed until the 2017-18 grand jury publishes its report later this spring. But Davis has responded to inquiries from the Enterprise by describing the impact of the Butte Fire as the culmination of a “perfect storm” of adverse impacts upon her office that began with the dramatic personnel cuts in 2011, an increase in workload as a result of reassessments required to keep up with the changes in all property values as the county recovered from the 2008 recession, then the Butte Fire in 2015.
April 13. 2018
Calaveras Enterprise
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