Teng's defense

Despite numerous conversations with the Bay Guardian reporter over the past few days, I felt it necessary to ensure your readership heard the facts behind the article written on Sept. 15, 2004, about the San Francisco Assessor-Recorder's Office ["Changing Values"].

Sadly to say, your reporter simply didn't provide all the facts to your readers when reporting the alleged "mistakes" made in the Assessor-Recorder's Office; she chose to rely on innuendo and the word of a few disgruntled employees rather than documentation and public record.

When the people of San Francisco asked me to clean up a difficult and complacent organization, I took them at their word. On my first day, I found the office to be mismanaged and dysfunctional with broken processes and a backlog of over 24,000 cases. I immediately set to work to create a responsible public service agency that would not only meet the goals set before it, but would exceed them.

My reforms and leadership are paying off.

I promised to capture new revenues and clear the horrendous backlog of cases. We did it. Last year, my office generated an additional $32 million in property- and transfer-tax revenue. That money went both to the General Fund to help close the deficit and to support the children of San Francisco. I promised to defend the city against a formidable amount of appeals and protect revenues. We did it. In fiscal 2003-2004 the potential loss in appeals for the city was over $61 million. Through the extraordinary efforts of our entire staff, we minimized this loss to only $15 million. I promised to bring professionalism and accountability to the Assessor-Recorder's Office. We did it. We made enormous strides toward creating a positive, professional, efficient, and high-performing public agency.

As with any organizational transition that requires flexibility, openness to new and improved ways of doing things, and the implementation of goals and accountability, there will be those who simply aren't willing to make the change. We created a public agency that seeks to consistently improve performance, accountability, and be responsive and fair to the taxpayers.

Let's look at the facts:

The Bay Guardian accused the Assessor-Recorder's Office of reducing a property assessment. The 12th Street apartment building noted in the article was assessed by an MAI appraiser for $600,000 in 2002. It was sold "as is" at public auction for $760,000 in 2002. Our office then mistakenly appraised the property at $1,393,000 by utilizing only comparable data from the area. Had our appraisers gone to the property (which is now our policy), they would have noted the deplorable condition of the property, the presence of asbestos, and numerous other elements that brought the corrected appraisal to an accurate $760,000.

A mistake was made but not the kind the Bay Guardian alleges. The first assessment was incorrect, my office corrected it, and that figure has been confirmed through the documents originally submitted to the probate court. Not a dollar in city revenue was uncollected, and the property owner is not paying a single dollar less than they should.

My office and I will work even harder to make sure protocols and procedures cannot be breached. We will continue to clean up the office to make sure we are treating taxpayers fairly and bringing in every dollar in revenue that is owed so we can do our part to fund programs for the city and our public schools.

Lastly, I appreciate your coverage of our office's commitment to defend the city against major appeals.

Mabel Teng
San Francisco assessor-recorder

San Francisco

Thea Lavin responds: In fact, the Assessor-Recorder's Office didn't assess Jin Zhen's 12th Street property in 2002. An independent appraiser who wasn't employed by the Assessor-Recorder's Office valued the property at $600,000. The amount wasn't recorded by the assessor-recorder and legally should have had no impact on the property's tax value. Teng's reference to an outside property-value opinion is misleading and has no effect on the official values assessed by appraisers within her office.

Natalya Epelbaum is employed by the Assessor-Recorder's Office and was assigned to assess Zhen's 12th Street property in July 2004. Epelbaum was privy to an extensive collection of photographs submitted by the property owner, which gave her full view of any damage the real estate sustained. These and other details of all the changed property values mentioned in our story are documented in the EZ ACCESS recording program found in the Assessor-Recorder's Office.

For the record

In "Deconstructing Joe" (9/15/04) we wrote that Residential Builders Association head Joe O'Donoghue was born in Ireland "under British rule." Technically, that's only partly true. O'Donoghue was born in 1937 in southern Ireland. The south, including the county he lived in, declared independence from the U.K. in 1921; the north didn't withdraw from the U.K. until 1938. Also, North Beach developer Brian O'Flynn, a District 3 candidate, called to tell us he isn't in fact a member of the RBA.