2010-11-03 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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MR. TORIGOE: Good morning. I’m Ivan Torigoe, the Deputy Director of Department of Environmental Management. MS. NICHOLSON: So, who would like to go next? MR. SITKO: My name is Stan Sitko. I’m a Real Property Tax Administrator. The Real Property Tax Division as it name implies deals with almost every facet of levying and collecting real property tax which classically is between 55 to 60% of the budgeted revenues of the county. I don’t have any handouts but then again I don’t think you folks want a bill at this point. The best way to define our core functions would be to describe it. We have five sections within our division. We have 48 total authorized positions, three of which are unfunded at this particular moment. One of our larger sections is the Appraisal section. We have 14 appraisers, 12 field appraisers, two commercial and condominium or specialized appraisers and one appraisal supervisor. That’s roughly comes out to about 10,000 parcel per appraiser, which they have to review annually and set a value on. Fundamentally what they do is they have to discover taxable real property, either by permitting or by other hence clue subdivisions. They then have to list the property and set a value on an annual basis on that property. One of the functions that we do is set the assessments. We do not get to set the rate. That is the council’s issue. The next section that comes into play would be the Clerical section who then assists the appraisers in putting information into the system. They then also apply and all and administering all exemptions that may exist. The next section that should be mentioned is our Abstracting section. We do not handle the actual physical mapping. That’s handled in Planning. But we do abstract the information that we get from the Bureau of Conveyances in order that we send the bill to the correct person, the owner, to make sure we have all owners. And the final section is our Collections section which actually collects the revenues. We bill twice a year. They collect the moneys, send it over to Mike. We also enforce, after three years if someone has not paid their real property tax, we do the foreclosure process and we auction off the properties. We typically have two sales a year. The last and final grouping obviously is the Administrator, and we have two people, both positions are unfunded, who are called the Evaluation Analysis. They usually function as multipliers. They’re specialists in either market modeling or working on issues that the appraisers need to be work on. Currently those two, because of the budget crunch and everything else, those duties are being handled by myself and the assistant administrator, having been in that position prior. In a nutshell, that’s what we do. MS. NICHOLSON: I have a feeling we’ll have some questions. Yes? MR. TAKABA: So your evaluation analysis that you unfunded, how do those positions affect revenue or does it? MR. SITKO: Directly, no, they don’t show up in something that you quantify. They’re multipliers for the appraisers. What they do is they help set up the tables that assess the properties. We have to assess the properties at a 100% of value within a coefficient dispersion of roughly 15%. What they do is they assist in making the appraisers more accurate. They set up the tables. They look at the impact of various legislative proposals. The ag specialist, there are two positions. One actually works more with real property evaluation and modeling. And the other one works with agricultural 7