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A lovely thought.
I urge you to call the Assessor's Office at 488-3509 with your concerns about your property values and see if you feel that you received any of these four "commitments" once your telephone call has been completed.
Is he saying that our unique interests are currently NOT being represented in Sacramento? If so, why would we want more of the same from him? What has he been doing for the last 6 years? Why wait until now to suddenly have good ideas? Or is his main interest in keeping things status quo? A new Assessor might expect actual results for the $100K-plus salary. |
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Proposition 13 is a legislative issue that is completely outside the control of the Assessor. Bullets 2-6: Sounds great! Why isn't he doing this already? He has had six years to get things started.
The homeowner's exemption is also a legislative issue that is completely outside the control of the Assessor. Pretty sure he means "MAY affect you", but I hope he pays more attention to detail in his work. Wouldn't want any extra zeros tacked onto the end of someone's property value.
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Once again, Proposition 13 is a legislative issue that is completely outside the control of the Assessor. If the California legislature or the voters decide to overturn Prop 13, your Assessor will do as he's told and your property taxes will go up.
The California Land Conservation Act is administered by the state, and was cut in the July 2009 budget. The Fresno County Board of Supervisors voted to honor existing Williamson Act contracts during their own budget hearings, but the moratorium on new contracts that was implemented in 2008 will continue indefinitely. If you have a Land Conservation Contract, the Assessor is legally bound to honor that contract. If the Board of Supervisors votes to cancel or non-renew, nothing the Assessor says will change that. |
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40,000 reductions for 2008 and 79,000 for 2009. How many were missed?
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A little slow on the uptake here - other California counties were aware of this problem as far back as 2008 and were working to make taxpayers aware. In fact, the Alameda County District Attorney was investigating as far back as April 2008. It was the many complaints from Assessor staff who were fielding phone calls about these letters that finally prompted the Fresno County Assessor to speak up. |
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Actually
this should read "beginning July 2009 and ending October
2009".
Scratch that, it has just been
very well-hidden. |
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The title companies already have special hours at the Recorder's Office. And the title companies will certainly continue to charge property owners for "Courier Fees" even though they did not pay any couriers. Carrying the document to the Recorder is rarely the reason escrow is delayed, so the "benefit" to property owners is mostly the increased fees they will pay to the title company. YOU will still have to bring the original document in to the office to record it. Of course, as e-recording develops it will save money and be more efficient. We're just not there yet, so this bit of puffery is very premature. A better question might be - why is this listed on Tim's web site as one of his accomplishments? This was a Recorder project.
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"Several"
years? More like three.
This may be convenient for the taxpayer, if they are able to find the right BIN numbers. It is not more efficient for the Assessor's Office, requiring a manual process of downloading and data-entry and hand-keying of the information submitted. |
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| "He joined the Fresno County Assessor's Office in 1991 and has over 18 years experience in appraising residential and commercial properties. " | Is he including his last six years as Assistant Assessor (06/03/2003) in this 18 years experience? It seems remarkably unlikely that he performed any appraisal duties as either Assistant Assessor or as Supervisor - Assessment Standards, which eliminates over one-third of his vast experience. | |
| "He holds an Advanced Certification issued by the State Board of Equalization." | This one tickles! The Advanced Certification sounds impressive, but mostly it allows the employee to reduce their BOE-required mandatory training from 24 hours per year to 12 hours per year. | |
| "He has served as Senior Appraiser, Supervisor - Assessment Standards and, for the last six years, as Assistant Assessor-Recorder, with responsibilities including staff hiring, development and promotion, budgeting, strategic planning, legislative analysis and technology development and oversite." | "Oversite"?
See job specifications: Senior Appraiser, Supervisor - Assessment Standards (position eliminated), Assistant Assessor-Recorder. Note the minimal minimum qualifications for these positions. What examples of "staff hiring", "development and promotion" (self-promotion?), "budgeting", "strategic planning", "legislative analysis" and "technology development and 'oversite'" can he provide? And why are these existing responsibilities nearly identical to the duties he plans to take over as Assessor? If this is what he's been doing for the past six years, it seems like he would have actual accomplishments to discuss. At least one accomplishment. |
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| "later graduated from Fresno State University with a BS in Business Administration" | BS? 'nuff said. | |
| Tim loves music and has been involved in choir and musical performance in his church for over 20 years. | Vote
for me! I go to church!
Shameless. Just wondering, is that the same church for over 20 years? Or did he position himself into a new, larger church for campaign purposes? |
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Let's see here ... So, first we have his boss, Robert Werner, who was so very grateful that he walked precincts and worked on his campaign that he hand-picked Tim for promotion to Supervisor Assessment Standards, at least until the pesky Assistant Assessor could be encouraged to retire and make way for Bob's dear friend Tim. Were any other applications even accepted for those positions? Then we have a number of Assessor staff members, who certainly can't be expected to decline if their boss asks to use their name. And shame on him for putting the employees into such a difficult position! What if he loses? He's provided a hit list of staff for the next Assessor to target. That would be illegal retaliation of course, so we can be sure that nothing will happen to them. I wonder how many staff he asked who felt that they were free to decline? (See above re: illegal retaliation.) In spite of the Mendota Unified School District tag, Rosemary Ramirez is also an Assessor employee - his secretary. I'm sure all these people felt free to say No. One can only assume that Dr. Lenz, Ms. Bell, and David Leming are also either employees or relatives. Sad. Or scary. |
This page last updated 07/05/2010 02:24 PM
