HomeMy WebLinkAboutMINUTES - 06091998 - D1 DA
THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF
CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, CAI.IFOR TIA
Adopted this Order on June 9, 1998 by the following vete:
AXES: Supervisors Uilkema, Gerber, DeSaulnier, Canciamilla and Rogers
NOES: None
ABSENT. None
ABSTAIN: None
SUBJECT: COUNTY ASSESSOR 1997-1998 PERFORMANCE REPORT
IT IS BY THE BOARD ORDERED that the 1997-1998 performance report of the
County Assessor's office is ACCEPTED.
I hereby certify that the foregoing is a true and
correct copy of an action taken and entered on
the minutes of the Board of Supervisors on the
date shown,
ATTESTED: - ..7 %'> "
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Phil Batc elor, Clerk of the Board
of Supervisors and County Administrator
By - �• ,
June L. McHuen, Deputy Clerk
GUS KRAMER
COUNTY ASSESSOR
1997 - 1998 PERFORMANCE REPORT
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Assessor's 1987-98
Performance Report
Table of Contents
Page
Description
Numb
er
Section I - Overview
Departmental Responsibilities.......................................................... 1
Organizational Structure................................................................... 1
Section 11 - Resources
Financial........................................................................................... 3
Personnel..................................... ........................................ .......... 4
Affirmative Action.............................................................................. 4
SickLeave........................................................................................ 5
StaffDevelopment............................................................................ 5
Automation....................................................................................... 5
Section 111 - Customer Service
Service Delivery System................................................................... 7
CustomerProfile............................................................................... 7
Customer Relationships.................................................................... 7
Section IV - Annual Performance
Performance Indicators
Obtain AB818 Funding............................................................ 8
Meet AB818 Repayment Performance................ ................... 8
Design Deed Imaging System............................. ................... 9
Settle Major Assessment Appeals........................................... 9
Accomplishments.............................................................................10
Section V - Challenges and New Directions
Challenges................................................................... ............... 11
NewDirections..............................................................!..................12
ASSESSOR'S OFFICE 9
May 27, 1998
SECTION I - OVERVIEW
A. Department Responsibilities
The purpose of the Assessor's Office is to produce a timely roll of all
property subject to local assessment, administer legally permissible
exemptions, develop and maintain a set of current mapsdelineating
property ownerships, defend assessments as required before an appellate
body and provide information and service to the public as needed. The
Assessor's Office is mandated to render all functions that are currently
being performed.
B. Organizational Structure
The Department is organized into four program areas. These program
functions are interrelated and work as a combined unit to meet the goals of
the office.
Appraisal - Ensure that all secured real and personal property within the
County has been accurately valued and entered on the regular and
supplemental assessment rolls.
Business - Ensure that all business personal property within the County
has been accurately reported and valued and values have been entered on
the regular and supplemental assessment rolls.
Support Services - Enroll all valid exemptions on the regular and
supplemental local assessment rolls, provide data entry and drafting
services to the department, review policies and procedures, and make
changes where necessary, and provide public service to agencies, private
organizations and to the general public.
Administrative Services - Establish and administer policies relative to
department operations and provide administrative guidelines for carrying
out these policies.
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Section ii - RESQURCES - �
A. Financial Resources
The budget is allocated as shown below among the four 1programs:
Program Expenditures Financing Net County Cost
Appraisal $4,303,473 $1 ,033,263 $3,270,210
Business 1 ,075,858 319,820 755,048
Support Services 3,814,442 959,459 2,854,983
Administrative Svc. 588.838 147.809 439,229
TOTAL. $9,780,821 $2,480,151 $7,320,470
Financing
Source Amount
Property Tax Administration $2,247,724
Fees 175,000
Interdepartmental Transfers 36.427
Total $2,450,151
Property Tax Administration - Fees collected from Cities and Special
Districts and funds from AB818.
Fees - Revenue received primarily from the sale of assessment data and
parcel maps.
Interdepartmental Transfers - Drafting services performed for L.AFCO.
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B. Personnel Resources D.1
6-9-98
Program_ Staff
Appraisal 55
Business 15
Support Services 62
Administrative Services 6
Total 135
This is the third year utilizing AB818 funds that we have been able to
restore more of our staff (three positions) that had been steadily
decreasing over the last few years. We are continuing to implement a
program of utilizing technicians (seven positions) to accomplish some of
the routine tasks currently being performed by the professional appraisal
staff. The utilization of technicians should allow more work to be
accomplished at a lower cost.
C. Affirmative Action
The Department is continually trying to improve its affirmative action
representation. As a result our extensive outreach program we were able to hire
a number of Junior Appraisers and Auditor Appraiser 1's to help are program.
We made progress and will continue our effort until our goal is met.
Management is where we have made the greatest improvement, we now have
five ethnic minorities and three females in appraisal management positions.
The following describes the staff by affirmative action category:
Male Female Taal Staff Workforce
White 50 47 97
African American 3 7 10 7.6% 7.6%
Hispanic 2 7 9 6.8% 10.5%
Asian/Filipino 7 6 13 9.8% 8.9%
American Indian 0 3 3 2.3% .6%
Filled Positions 62 70 132 53.0%* 45.4%
Vacant Positions 6
Total Positions 138
Percentage of FemaleStaff
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D. Sick Leave - -D1
98
The Department continues to discourage the indiscriminate use of Sick Leave.
This last year our total sick leave hours climbed dramatically, this was due
primarily to extended maternity leave, a heart transplant, and' numerous
hospitalizations. Over the last three years the average Sick Leave used per
employee has remained fairly constant. The Sick Leave hours in BOLD were
adjusted to remove hours used for maternity leave and catastrophic events.
Adjusted Sick Leave !Hours
TOTAL HOURS TOTAL HOURS
YEAR HOURS PER EMPL HOURS PER EMPL
1996 7,929.0 64.7 69971.1 56.9
1996 7,526.2 60.1 69759.2 54.1
1997 9,158.0 66.3 73598.4 55.1
E. Staff Development
Performance Evaluation - The Department requires that a performance
evaluation be done annually on all employees by their supervisor. All
supervisors are evaluated by their staff and the results of these evaluations
becomes part of the Supervisors own evaluation.
Professional Development - All appraisal personnel are required to attain an
appraisal certification issued by the State Board of Equalization, and to
maintain their certification are required to complete up to 24 hours of
continuing education annually. Qualifying courses are available through the
Appraisal Institute, State Board of Equalization, and we work with other
neighboring counties to provide qualifying courses.
We encourage all of our staff to take courses from the training;institute, PC
software training from Comp USA, and other course work to assist in their
career development.
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F. Automation
Automation has and continues to play an important role in allowing the office
to improve production so more work can be accomplished with fewer staff
resources. The office utilizes a combination of the County mainframe
computer, office Local Area Network (LAN), County Wide Area Network
(WAN), and Personal Computers to accomplish its' mission.
In the last three years we have acquired over 95 new personal computers and
were able expand our Local Area Network (LAN) through the property Tax
Administration Funds provided by AB818. We have linked our offices and the
Clerk of the Board with fibre optic cable to provide instant access to our
Assessment Appeal Database and as well as other common databases. We
have one full time staff person with appraisal experience who!writes and
maintains all of our PC database programs. By reassigning some of our staff
we have been able to enhance our in-house PC database staff to meet the
continuing automation demands of our appraisal and audit staffs. Many of our
appraisers and auditor/appraisers have learned the Access Data Base and
have developed programs to automate their daily operations.
Appraisal Division - Utilizes Personal Computers using in-house developed
software to assist appraisers in completing the more complex !appraisals. The
programs speed the appraisal process as well as providing documentation for
answering questions or presentations to the Assessment Appeals Board. In
March we installed a comparable sales system on our LAN making county
sales data available to all appraisal staff for appraising Land, Commercial, and
Industrial properties.
Business Division - Utilizes Personal Computers and in-house software to
assist the auditors in completing local and out of state audits. The new
leasing system installed last year has greatly improved the efficiency of our
leasing section. The use of portable personal computers has also enhanced
the speed of completing Audits as well as providing uniform documentation.
Support Division - Continues to utilize computers to draw the floor plans of
new construction and to compute square footage, removing a time-consuming
task from the appraisal staff. We are in the process of updating the hardware
for our Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) system. Also we are finalizing a
contract to convert our parcel maps into digitized formats. Funding from
AB818 will help to speed this labor intensive conversion process. Once
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converted this system will provide many dividends in the future. We rec@AI
connected our drafting computers to the County WAN, which allows us to
electronically exchange files with the Public Works Department and to
access each ethers data.
Administrative Services - We are continuing to expand our Local Area
Network (LAN) making the sharing of data a reality in the office. Payroll and
personnel data is maintained on the network and provides easy access for
reporting data that is not available readily through the County system, This
division continues to develop and implement new procedures to improve the
overall production of the office.
SECTION III -,CUSTOMER SERVICES
A. Service Delivery System
We provide a wide variety of public service functions: Verification of
Ownership, parcel Numbers, Building Square Footage, Use Codes,
Parcel Maps, Assessment Data, Property Characteristics, Mailing labels,
Data Tapes. Most of these services are free to the property owner.
However, we do charge non property owners and commercial
companies who are reselling the data.
We provide service over the counter (Monday - Thursday 8:00 to 4:30
and Friday 8:00 -4:00), and telephone service (Daily 8:00 to 4:00).
B. Customer Profile
The Assessor's Office serves all the residents of Contra Costa County
by ensuring fair and accurate assessment of property in the County.
This includes all property subject to local assessment and the
application of all permissible exemptions. This necessitates dealing with
the single family residence as well as major commercial and industrial
property owners.
C. Customer Relationships
We are proud of the level of public service provided by our office and
receive numerous unsolicited letters commending our staff. We have
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developed a WEB page on the Internet that offers answers to mag*_9$
taxpayer questions, we will also have forms that can b6 downloaded
thus saving both time and money for the office as well as the taxpayer.
The taxpayer can also communicate with our office using E mail on the
Internet. Our next goal on the Internet will be to provide more extensive
information regarding parcel ownership and values so as to reduce the
counter and phone traffic in the office.
Section IV - Annual Perfgrmance
A. Performance Indicators
1 . Obtain AB818 Property Administration funds. Year 3)
The goal was to obtain the $2,022,000 allocated to Contra
Costa County. These funds were available to allow county
assessor's to reduce backlogs, enhance automation, defend
assessment appeals, restore staffing, and provide staff
training.
Outcome - With the Beard of Supervisors approval we were
able to negotiate a contract with the State
Department of Finance and receive the funding.
2. Meet AB818 Repayment Performance Criteria. (Year 3)
There are five performance-based repayment criteria
specified in the AB818 contract. These criteria were based
on assessing new construction with no building permits, re-
inventory of sold properties, performing additional non-
mandatory audits, continuing to review and grant Proposition
8 reductions in value, and not failing to defend all
assessment appeals before the Assessment Appeals Board.
If these criteria were met this would satisfy repayment of the
loan.
Outcome - We are projecting performance at or above 100%
on each of the five specified criteria and therefore
we should satisfy the repaymentcriteria for the
1997-98 AB818 contract.
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3. Design a deed Imaging System that will work in conjunction wO8
the deeds being processed by the Recorders Office.
The goal was to design a system that would eliminate many
of the manual process that Were required to analyze the
deeds and enter them into our mainframe system.
Outcome - The system has been designed and a contract
has been signed to develop and implement the
system. We plan to begin working with imaged
deeds and sales questionnaires in the next few
months.
4. Settle a number of major complex assessment appeals some that
have been in negotiation for a number of years.
This has been an on going goal to reduce the number of
assessment appeals. They require the services of outside
appraisal expertise as well as our own internal staff. These
appeals are expensive and also require an inordinate amount
of staff time.
Outcome - Again this year with the availability of AB818
funding we were able to hire specialized outside
appraisal firms to assist in resolving many major
appeals. There are still a number of major
appeals pending they much work has been
completed on and should be resolved before the
end of the calendar year.
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S. Accomplishments
1. Continued expanded public service hours so as to provide
counter service during the lunch hour.
2. developed and implemented a computer system to the
analyze all current residential properties, with Proposition 8
reductions, to determine if adjustments were needed to
reflect current market values.
3. Continued to develop new informational brochures to provide
answers to many taxpayer questions. Also have included
forms for requesting tax saving programs.
4. Installed new system on our LAN that makes comparable
sales data available to all appraisers working Land,
Commercial and Industrial properties.
5. Expanded Local Area Network (LAN) to include all senior
residential appraisers and supervisors. Also'included all new
technicians and clerical supervisors.
C. Successfully resolved a number of large assessment
appeals.
7. Acquired additional personal computers for staff and
upgraded network server.
8. Continued participation in Contra Costa Home & Carden
Show.
9. Continued Real Estate Brokers Public Education Program.
10. Added three new Real Property Technical Assistant positions
in the Residential Property Division.
11 . Continue resolving most residential appeals within one year
of filing (Law allows two years).
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Section V - Challenges and New DirectionsDA
6-9-98
A. Challenges
1, Year 2404 Computer Update: January 1, 2000 is going to be a
traumatic period for many organizations utilizing alder computer
systems. The development of our mainframe Land Information
System (LIS.) was started in 1982, therefore we will be faced with
updating a very complex system this year. We have spent many
hours looking for new systems to replace our current LIS system,
but have been unable to find a new system that has all capabilities
of the LIS system.
We have already spent many hours working with Data Processing
staff in defining problems and developing potential solutions.
There are many challenges to be faced by Data Processing and
our office in making program changes and testing the many
programs to insure that all contingencies have been addressed.
We plan to have the system conversion completed by the end of
this calendar year. This will entail hundreds of hours of staff time
to complete the project so we can continue to meat our statutory
mandates after January 1 , 2000.
2. Restoration of Proposition 8 Values: The real estate market in
the Bay Area appears to be starting to recover, this will result in
an increase in the number of sales as well as the need to start
restoring previous reductions in value (Proposition 8's). The
combination of these two events is going to put an unprecedented
burden on our staff. We have contracted with a firm who has
developed a system for identifying those residential parcels with
Proposition 8 reductions that maybe subject to either additional
decreases or increases in value.
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B. New Directions
1 . Adequate Office Space: The real estate market recession has
caused a tremendous increase in assessment appeals in the
commercial and industrial area of the office. We have met this
increase through a combination of automation and additional
staffing, unfortunately both these solutions require additional office
space. We have been forced to split our staff into two locations
which is very inefficient and costly to operate. We have reached a
point where we are placing staff in totally inadequate space to
perform their jobs, space that doesn't meet ADA standards. We
need adequate space to house our entire office staff and to be
located near other county agencies involved in the tax assessment
function.
2. Recorder/Assessor Integrated Imaging System We have
developed a system in conjunction with the Recorders Office to
automate the processing of deeds utilizing imaged deeds and
inputting directly into our Land Information System Data Base.
The system is scheduled to be installed in the third quarter of this
year. AB818 will provide funding for the new system.
3. Automation: Automation continues to be the most effective way
for us to meet future challenges. We are always looking for areas
in the office where we can functions more efficient through
changes in procedures and automation. The Recorder/Assessor is
our major undertaking this year but we continue to look for less
ambitious project that can be pursued with less resources.
4. Expanded `UVEB Site: To provide better public service and at the
same time reduce the umber of counter and phone calls, we are
planning to have certain assessment data available on the
Internet. Information would be free of charge to Homeowners, but
a fee would be charged to commercial organizations.
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