Assessing Value...

Jim Rooney, Assessor

Mission: "Our mission is to create equitable, timely and accurate property tax assessments to fund public services. We will strive to be a source of accurate and timely property information for local government and the community."

Link to the Assessor's Website

Phone: (209) 223-6351
Assessor's Email

For those that have already felt the sting of depreciation, there may be some relief on the horizon. The Amador County Assessor's office is reporting that property taxes may be lowered because of property value declines.

The Amador Ledger Dispatch reports in Reassessing your property values:

With a decrease of property values over the past year or so, the Amador County Assessor's Office is in the process of reviewing and reducing some assessments throughout the county and we are also receiving numerous inquiries about the reduction of assessments.

The key word here is "some". It is not likely in the county's best interest to have mass reductions in assessments being that they receive a large portion of yearly revenue from property taxes.

However, we are obligated to reduce assessments when the assessed value of a property is greater than fair market value.

The issue then is to provide evidence that your property has in fact lost value since your purchase. My suggestion would be to do all that you can to assist in this process. Hire your own appraiser and push the Assessor's Office to examine the results.

A family member of mine that lives down in the Stockton area has lost a bit of value in her home. She asked for the county to reduce the assessment based on the market conditions. Their response was that there were no reliable comps in the area to support her claim. She responded that there have been multiple foreclosures and that there are comps from FC purchases and bank buy-backs. Their reply was that foreclosures do not count toward comp values.

Amazing that FCs seem to affect everything else prompting so much government action to help and bail out the banks, but they don't affect your tax rate. Maybe if you worked for Citi Bank, MBIA, or AMBAC you could get a break.

Expect the Assessor's Office to drag their feet on this, but keep pushing.

Assessment review requests may be submitted to the assessor's office at any time. Requests for assessment review that are received between July 2 and Nov. 30 will be reviewed for the current tax year. Requests received between Nov. 30 and June 30 may be examined for the next tax year.

Like with most things in the government, these time frames make no common sense. Strange how there is a 5 month window in the middle of the year that is applicable to the current tax year, but there is a 7 month window (including the first 6 months) that is applicable to the next tax year. Does that make sense?

In any case, the best advice is to keep pushing and make a lot of noise. Be the squeaky wheel and demand that grease!

So, give Jim Rooney a call and let him know that you also support "equitable, timely and accurate property tax assessments".