Lake Forest Increases in Value

Lake Forest got some good news last week when the OC Assessor’s office published the local assessment roll of values for 2016-17, reflecting taxable property values as of January 1, 2016. Lake Forest values increased more than $1 Billion, an increase of 8.1%.

Since 37% of our City revenue comes from property taxes, this is really good news. Last year property taxes brought in $14,975,200.00 – our single largest source of income. Next year this should be even greater.

Putting the cherry on the cake, our increase, 8.11%, was the highest increase in Orange County, narrowly beating #2 Irvine with 8.10%. Brea was a distant third at 7.06%. Among our neighbors, here are the figures

· Laguna Niguel – 3.93%

· Mission Viejo – 3.98%

· RSM – 4.01%

· Laguna Hills – 4.15%

· Aliso Viejo – 5.72%

· Laguna Woods – 5.77%

Of course this good news comes with some bad news built-in. Part of the reason our rate is so high is that we are adding more and more homes which are selling for higher and higher prices. This adds to the traffic problem, to the over-crowding in schools, to the parking problem, and to the costs of providing expanded services to the new homes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a Town Hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be on August 13 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.