After 30 years as Santa Clara County’s assessor, Larry Stone retired in July, triggering a Nov. 4 particular election to pick his alternative.
Neysa Fligor is, far and away, probably the most certified of the 4 candidates vying to guide the workplace chargeable for setting tax values for greater than 500,000 properties assessed at greater than $750 billion.
Fligor, a former legal professional for Santa Clara County, has represented the assessor’s workplace in contentious appeals over property values. Final 12 months, after 9 years within the personal sector as a senior legal professional for HP, she went to work for Stone serving as particular assistant to the assessor and, since he retired, assistant assessor.
Presently second in command, Fligor is chargeable for the 250-person workplace’s day-to-day operations. together with its annual evaluation roll course of and the workplace’s multi-million-dollar alternative of its 40-year-old software program system. Fligor — presently additionally vice mayor of Los Altos and president of the Cities Affiliation of Santa Clara County — is able to lead. Her efficiency within the workplace has earned her the endorsement of each Stone and native unions — who usually sharply disagreed.
The workplace of the assessor isn’t a typical elected place. Figuring out the values of properties isn’t about politics. As an alternative, this job requires pure adherence to the strict calculus of property evaluation and the letter of state legal guidelines, together with Proposition 13, California’s 1978 voter-approved tax-cutting initiative.
Furthermore, Santa Clara County isn’t your typical county. It’s dwelling not solely to probably the most useful corporations on the planet but additionally its most technologically refined. Alphabet, HP, NVIDIA, Intel, Apple and Cisco, amongst different company giants, are based mostly right here. Including to the problem, these corporations have deep pockets to attraction their assessed valuations — and lots of do.
Proper now, $142 billion of assessed worth is presently in dispute in Santa Clara County. That determine has doubled since 2019 and is now at its highest-ever degree, largely a perform of declining workplace values tied to distant work traits which have continued because the COVID pandemic.
With 20% of the overall assessed worth now in dispute, practically all of which is from companies, the following assessor should perceive litigation and be ready to counter giant company property house owners’ armies of attorneys.
In contrast to Fligor, none of her opponents have authorized expertise or have dealt with evaluation attraction circumstances.
Yan Zhao is Fligor’s most critical opponent. The Saratoga Metropolis Council member is {an electrical} engineer and laptop scientist with an intensive background designing and advertising chips within the semiconductor business. She says her sturdy technical experience might assist her modernize the workplace’s evaluation software program and customer support system. However that software program modernization is already underway; in the meantime, Zhao lacks a authorized background and business appraisal expertise.
Candidate Bryan Do is a board member of East Aspect Union Excessive College District. Do says the assessor’s workplace’s rising values beneath attraction necessitate technological modernization and a startup mentality, which he claims his historical past as an investor and startup founder qualify him to implement. Nonetheless, Do was not prepared to share a resume with our editorial board and his LinkedIn profile mentions corporations that don’t have any discernible on-line presence.
In contrast to Do, Rishi Kumar has a protracted historical past within the valley’s tech business as a mechanical engineer and senior government. Kumar, who refused to satisfy with our editorial board, has served on Saratoga’s Metropolis Council, the place he didn’t develop a superb working relationship with different council members.
Kumar has mounted three failed bids for Congress as a Democrat. Now, he’s campaigning like a Howard Jarvis-style anti-tax crusader, shamelessly pandering to seniors by promising to work towards exempting them from property taxes — one thing far past the authority of the assessor’s workplace.
Fortuitously, Santa Clara County voters have a strong selection to interchange Stone. With out reservation, we recommend Fligor.
