Lake County Tax Collector Patrick Sullivan and Assistant Tax Collector Elizabeth Martinez presented their department’s results from their May 22, 2022, tax lien default sale to the Lake County Board of Supervisors last week. According to a weekend report by Lake County Record Bee reporter Nikki Carboni the sale totaled almost $1.4 million for distribution to the general fund. Martinez said that these funds were deemed “excess” because the revenue from the sale of the defaulted property exceeded the amount of defaulted taxes owed to the county. Ms. Carboni’s report did not explain the timing of the report — why the sale from almost two years ago was finally being reported in March of 2024.
Mendocino County Supervisors have never received a comparable report, nor have they received an explanation for the lack of a report, nor have they ever asked about the subject. The last time the tax lien sales subject came up was in 2023 when Carrie Shattuck asked the County for a list of tax defaulted properties and was told that the Tax Collector’s office was unable to provide the report due to unresolved computer/software problems and that she should try again later, perhaps month later. We do not know if “later” ever arrived. But as far as we know, no such report was provided. We do know that even Shattuck’s simplest information requests have been stonewalled and delayed time and time again, despite her dogged attempts to follow up.
Tax defaulted properties are just one component of Mendo’s uncollected revenue that the supposedly broke county seems unable to report on, much less collect. The Board’s directive last spring that the CEO report include a monthly report on the status of assessing unassessed properties has been ignored for almost a year now, although County Clerk-Recorder-Tax Collector Katrina Bartolomie has verbally reported that several million dollars worth of “supplemental” assessment notices have been sent out in recent months. Bartolomie always notes that those “supplementals” are “not pro-rated.”
These seemingly large numbers are very misleading however, since they give no indication of how much revenue the “supplemental” assessments represent to the County’s general fund.
For example, last week Bartolomie reported that in March her office had sent out 345 supplemental notices for a total of about $38 million in additional assessed value. Ms. Bartolomie’s brief report did not mention the accumulated value of the Supplemental notices since the Board’s directive was issued.
$38 million taxed at 1% per year, is about $380k per year, which, after pro-rating, might be $200k in additional revenue. Then, since the County only gets about 30% of property taxes (the rest goes to schools and special districts), the County’s share might be around $130k per year, barely enough to cover the half-dozen or so additional assessor’s staffers the Board approved last year in the false hope that it would be “revenue generating.”
But that’s only step one in the process, a property owner has to accept the “supplemental notice” (i.e., not dispute it) and then the tax has to be collected. These notices represent only a small fraction of uncollected taxes. As noted previously, the county is far behind on picking up re-assessed property when ownership changes hands (to be taxed at the value of the new purchase price); there are a large but unknown number of recent property purchasers who have yet to be billed for the value of their new purchases; there are unpaid tax delinquencies of an unknown but reportedly large amount; and there are the above mentioned tax-defaulted properties, which, if left collected for four years or more (i.e., without the formal filing of a lien) become uncollectable; and lastly there’s the actual sale of the tax defaulted property for the taxes due as mentioned in the Lake County report — a very long, cumbersome process at best.
Despite the near-constant claims of multi-million dollar budget deficits, Mendo’s well-paid Supervisors, CEO staff, and financial officials have never expressed the slightest interest in a comprehensive report on uncollected taxes, much less what’s being done to make sure all taxes due are collected. Nor have they inquired about the status of the Teeter Plan and its accompanying Teeter Fund which is supposed to buffer the differences between unpaid or underpaid taxes and accompanying penalties and interest against the payouts to the schools and special districts, with the County (theoretically) pocketing the penalties and interest for the General Fund.
Not only does this utter failure to address uncollected taxes represent massive official incompetence and gross malfeasance, but it deprives the County’s General Fund departments (Sheriff, jail, DA, Probation, Roads, Planning and Building, Environmental Health, and so forth) with funds necessary for basic county services which cost increasingly more and more every year as inflation erodes the spending value of whatever is collected and the Supervisors blithely hand out pay raises to employees and top officials.
Instead the Board and top officials devote hours and hours to relative trivialities like… Oh, never mind.
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Carrie Shattuck updates: Re: Tax Collection Incompetence:
The Auditor/Contoller, Ms. Pierce, recently addressed the Board about doing a Default Property Tax sale, although there is still not a list. Also this process is being further delayed as no one currently in the office has done one before.
Update on request #23-929, 2023-24 Executive Office positions and salaries. I received a report for 2022-23 salaries and positions, highlighted pages from the current wage chart and the year-to-date for 2023-24. This request was closed and unpublished although the information requested was never supplied. Typical Mendo.
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Veterans Service Office Return to Observatory Update:
CEO Darcy Antle told the Supervisors on Tuesday that “the Executive Office is working with the Air Quality District to identify an office space to relocate the District office out of 405 Observatory and we hope to have that move completed mid-April for Air Quality. The movement of the Veterans Service office relocation will take a bit longer than that but we are working to move them out.”
Let’s review: the Veterans Service office was moved out of their 405 Observatory Avenue cottage/office in a little over a week in December of 2023 and the Air Quality District moved in. After an initial round of complaints in January, the Board issued a press release admitting that the move was mishandled, but insisting that the move was a done-deal. On March 6, however, after almost three months of agitation by veterans and their supporters, the Board reluctantly reversed that decision. But the reversal/move couldn’t be physically accomplished until a new location was found for Air Quality which had allegedly “lost their lease.” But that turned out not to be true because the lease increase the County claimed was a problem would have been paid by the state. It was later discovered that the real reason for the Air Quality District move to 405 Observatory was an attempt to capture the lease payments that the state had been paying by putting Air Quality into the county-owned Observatory Avenue cottage where the Vets office was. When the Board reversed that decision, instead of moving Air Quality into the county-owned Public Health facility on Dora (across the street, basically) where the Vets office was moved to, the County found an alternative location for Air Quality in a non-County owned facility where the state’s lease payments will again go to a private landlord, defeating the original idea to snag a few thousand a month in rent. We do not know what the about-to-be emptied offices at the Dora Street facility where the Vets are moving from will be used for.
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That Redwood Valley Gas Station Proposal
Several remarks at last Tuesday morning when the Supervisors considered the appeal of the Planning Commission’s denial of a ten-pump gas station/convenience store off Highway 101 in Redwood Valley just didn’t add up.
According to the agenda item, the applicant, Mr. Mahmoud Alam of the Faizan Corporation in Ukiah, wants to build a large fuel facility with ten pumps under two, well-lit freeway style canopies with 28 parking spaces and associated underground tanks and plumbing. The project is proposed at the site of the old Mrs. Denson’s cookie factory.
Former Sheriff Tom Allman was among the supporters of the station saying that more gas stations contributes to public safety by providing another location for fuel during an emergency. Others defended the project for the jobs it would create and the potential economic revitalization of the area. Alam’s attorney, Brian Momsen of the Ukiah law firm Vanucci Momsen & Morrow, told the Board that the project should be approved because it is within the site’s zoning rules and it is therefore the applicant’s automatic right to build.
Opponents cited Mr. Mahmoud’s recent $500k settlement with the Sonoma County DA for not following state environmental rules at several other gas station locations leading to fuel spills and leakage. They also said the project was too big and would create hazardous traffic conditions at the on/off ramp to/from Highway 101. (The addition of a side road to allow traffic to more safely enter and exit was estimated to cost an extra $2 million.) Opponents also say there are already plenty of places to get gas in the area.
At the outset of the appeal hearing Mr. Momsen said his client had new traffic data which showed that the station would not generate anywhere near the applicant’s initial estimate of over 5,000 vehicle trips per day. Momsen said they now estimate that there would be less than 1,000 vehicles per day. Therefore, Momsen said, the project should be re-evaluated based on this new data.
Supervisor Ted Williams — obviously categorically opposed to the project — said, basically, too late; the applicant should have submitted the correct estimate with the original application; he can just re-submit and go through the process anew. Supervisor Glenn McGourty basically agreed saying he supported the sentiments of his Redwood Valley constituents who oppose the project by a large majority.
Supervisors Dan Gjerde and John Haschak wanted to give the applicant a chance for re-evaluation as long as the County didn’t have to pay for it. Supervisor/Chair Mulheren thought that the hearing might as well go on anyway since they were all there.
One project opponent complained that the project would undermine the business at the Coyote Valley gas station across the highway, as if the County should block the proposed station as a favor to the Indians. Mr. Alam pointed out that the Coyote Valley station was a commercial franchise and paid the Rancheria for a lease, not a percentage of gasoline sales.
The private consultant who was paid by Mr. Alam, a woman from Sonoma County calling herself W-Trans to prepare the original traffic estimate, said she based it on standard station planning factors from the 1980s, explaining that such estimates do not account for 21st century conditions with electric vehicles, higher gas mileage, and other trip reduction factors. Therefore, in the last few days, after a conversation with the applicant, she had revised her estimate to less than 1,000 trips per day, less than a fifth of the initial number. This, of course, begs the question of why the high estimate was even used or submitted. But no one asked.
The most interesting remark was when a caller pointed out that if the project was now estimated to generate only 1,000 trips per day, why did they need ten pumps round the clock? No one picked up on this question either, not even the applicant.
Why would the consultant use outdated planning factors? Why didn’t the applicant notice this sooner? Why did the applicant base his project plans on inflated traffic data? (The project has been in the pipeline for years having been first proposed years ago.) Why didn’t the planning staff ask about the relevance of 1980s planning factors? What does this day about Mendo’s planning process?
All this professional paperwork and processing and delay and cost and yet nobody asked these key questions.
For the time being, although Williams and McGourty seem staunchly against the application, the Board reluctantly decided to let the Planning Team take a new look at the project in light of the lower traffic estimate and bring it back to the Board next month.
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