Supervisors also voted to accept a $2.06 million grant for the county assessor’s office, but supervisors could not get four votes to appropriate the money to Assessor Paul Dictos. Dictos said he would add 11 jobs with the three-year grant. He said he wants to bring assessments up to date and modernize the office’s computer system, a project he has been working on in cooperation with Vicki Crow, the county auditor/tax collector. Fresno County could lose the grant money if the supervisors fail to appropriate it, warned County Counsel Daniel Cederborg. “The state will not allow us to keep the money sitting in a fund someplace,” he said. County Administrative Officer John Navarrette said the county would have to use general fund tax revenues to expand the assessor’s staff unless the grant money is used. “This money is critical so we can get out of this manual system we have been using for the last 50 years,” Dictos said. Supervisors Poochigian and Phil Larson opposed the grant. Poochigian said it would allow the assessor’s office to generate more tax revenues. “This is about taking money out of the taxpayers’ pockets, and if you want to do that, vote yes,” she said. Larson said Dictos already has raised revenues with higher taxes on Williamson Act properties. He said Dictos supported “an unfair assessment levied against certain taxed groups in the county, and I don’t care what Mr. Dictos said, it was levied against certain tax groups in the county and not equalized across the county. If we’re going to have taxes, let’s equalize them among everybody.” Borgeas, Perea and Case McNairy supported accepting the grant. Borgeas said the issue is not a philosophical discussion about taxes. “We are here to figure out whether to accept dollars from Sacramento for an expedited program,” he said. At Perea’s suggestion, the board will reconsider the grant decision in January when two new supervisors — Mendes and Brian Pacheco — will be seated. Pacheco is replacing Larson, who is retiring. Read more here: fresnobee/2014/12/02/4265624/zero-tolerance-policy-remains.html#storylink=cpy
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 06:23:21 +0000