S.F. gives treasurer unintended tax break on home expansion – Property among thousands in city assessor's backlog
Must be a slow news week…
The city treasurer, Jose Cisneros, is under the gun today after a report in the Chronicle about how after a substantial addition to his home (completed in 2003) he and a reported 7,000 other homeowners have not been reassessed for property taxes by the city.
“San Francisco Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, another recent Newsom appointee who is running for re-election in November, said thousands of other San Francisco property owners were similarly receiving temporary discounts on their taxes because his office hadn’t been keeping up with new construction for years.”
“This property is just an example of the larger issue,” said Ting, who was appointed assessor-recorder two months ago. “This office has been poorly managed and needs more support.”
“After Ting took the job, he said, he found that the four-year backlog of properties in need of reassessment had grown to between 4,500 and 7,000 under his predecessors, costing the city at least $2 million a year in taxes — and possibly much more.”
So if this is a widespread problem caused by a screwed up department, why put Cisneros’ head on the chopping block? Why single him out? Who the hell cares WHO hasn’t been reassessed. It’s not his job to make sure that another city department has its act together. When homeowners are assessed, they should be charged. In this case, they can be retroactively charged for back taxes up to four years in arrears. If the city doesn’t have the manpower to assess these homes, go spend some of that $2M in potential income and pay someone $100k/year to handle the job. Seems like a fair give-and-take to me.
I don’t know Mr. Cisneros, nor do I have a position on the job he does for the city, but I find it really unfair that they would single him out due to another department’s problems, and just because he holds a public office.
I can only imagine how well that $2M could be put to use in our school system, too…
