$5.6 Million in State Grants to Help County Collect More Property Tax

By City News Service:

The Riverside County Assessor’s Office will be expanding its workforce and implementing programs to enhance the property tax revenue collection process, thanks to $5.6 million in state grants that the Board of Supervisors Tuesday authorized the assessor to use.

“This will benefit not only the state, but the county,” said Assessor- Clerk-Recorder Larry Ward, who is retiring at the end of the month. “This will definitely position our office to be able to improve efficiencies and (realize a greater) return on investment.”

The grants are being disbursed as part of the State-County Assessors’ Partnership Agreement Program, or SCAPA, created in the 2014-15 fiscal year budget signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in June.

About a third or more of local property tax revenue goes to support K-12 education, so successful implementation of SCAPA would reap benefits for the state public education system as much as for county governments, Ward indicated.

“We’re going to be hiring some folks (to ferret out) escaped assessments and the like,” he said.

Property tax revenue serves as the county’s largest source of discretionary income.

“There was a drop in property tax values during the recession,” board Chairman Marion Ashley noted. “That meant you had to reduce people’s property taxes. Now they’re going back up. We’ve had a lot of inquiries about that. People wondering whether there was a mistake made. But most of it’s due to circumstances.”

Ashley said he hoped SCAPA would help with clarifying -- and justifying - - changes in valuations.

According to assessor documents, the pilot project will “improve (the assessor’s) ability to fairly and efficiently administer the county property tax rolls and related essential duties,” according to assessor documents, which state that program “staff and technology funded through this ... will be directed toward the expeditious discovery, reassessment and enrollment of properties, as well as responding to appeals and conducting property tax audits.”

The county will be required to kick in a dollar-for-dollar match of the state grants for the duration of the program, which sunsets in fiscal year 2016- 17.

Funding will support a total of 14 new positions.