Supervisors OK Funds for 250 Workers to Collect Property Tax

Prodded by taxpayer complaints and county administrators, the county Board of Supervisors agreed Tuesday to spend nearly $2 million to hire 250 additional workers to speed the processing and collection of local property taxes.

The supervisors voted to spend the additional funds--with the bulk of it going to the treasurer-tax collector’s office--after county administrators warned that the added workers are needed to pull in property tax revenue that the board was already counting on.

Among other things, the supervisors are depending on additional property tax revenue for $3.25 million to keep outpatient clinics open in the county’s financially strapped mental health system. And Assessor John Lynch told the board Tuesday that the lack of additional workers could impair the ability to collect that revenue.

Some of the lagging collections represent properties that have only recently been put on the tax rolls.

Blaming a computer foul-up for errors in an estimated 100,000 property tax assessments, Lynch also said he needed an additional 100 temporary workers--at a cost of $750,000--to help the department during the next four months.

About $1.2 million of the total amount approved by supervisors will go for 145 permanent workers in the treasurer-tax collector’s office--which represents a 60% increase in staffing--and another seven workers in the auditor-controller’s office.

Supervisor Pete Schabarum objected to the additional help for the treasurer-tax collector’s office, questioning why the appropriation request comes “in the waning months” of the fiscal year.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich, however, joined his colleagues in approving the additional money after pointing out that he has received an avalanche of complaints about snafus in the property tax system. “This is one issue our office gets more complaints on than any other,” he said.

Property taxes make up some 20%, or $1.9 billion, of the county’s annual budget. There are 2.3 million taxable properties in the county.