First, every year I have to fill out the same form to get a senior discount on my property tax. There is no reason for this annual wastefulness. If my status ever changed, I found the fountain of youth, or died, my status would be communicated to the assessors office automatically.
Second, when a property owner applies to lower the assessment on their property, where the property value has fallen, there is an 18 month delay before the new assessment is applied. The re-assessed value then only lasts for one year. The property reverts to its higher assessed value automatically.
Thus the assessors office is getting a cascade of increasing re-assessment appeals. The whole process is burdensome, growing exponentially and unnecessary.
To assume the assessors office is just incompetent is a mistake. The assessors office, for 90 years or more, has been corrupt.
In the early 1960’s I formed a group called Research in Politics and invited guest speakers. Being a naïve San Franciscan I asked a visiting Chicago political science professor if he was impressed with the lack of corruption in San Francisco.
He found, in 1964, that there were 14 hat check girls at the leading restaurants. The 14 hat check girls worked for the assessor. Big landowners who wanted favorable assessments would give cash to one of the 14 hat check girls who would deliver it to the assessor.
Years later when a state attorney general began investigating local assessors many were found to be corrupt and were sent to jail.
In San Francisco, our assessor, Russ Wolden, was also found guilty and sent to jail but the news was only three column inches in the newspapers and 30 seconds on the TV news.
I looked up the assessments of the newspapers and TV stations and they were preposterously low.
So the beginning of this blog is not really about incompetence in the assessors office. We can be sure it is a reflection of modern day corruption.