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And now for the REST of the story... I know exactly how many of you have read my page regarding that ill fated meeting with the bear baiting State Senator Pam Roach (R-Auburn), but despite that, I must now report the conclusion of the great property tax debate. On Feb 20, 1997, I had my hearing with the King County Board of Appeals, and here are the results. The board meets in room 510 of the King County Administration Building, located between 4th and 5th Avenues at James street in downtown Seattle. It's easy to pay for parking downtown, but this building is located close enough to the outskirts of downtown proper that it is possible to find street parking. You just have to search for it. My hearing was scheduled for 3 pm, but I wanted to get there early so that I could watch a proceeding to get a feel for how they went. And the answer is: dull dull dull. I arrived at 1:45, and asked if I could sit in on a meeting. The woman who was handling the scheduling went and got her supervisor, and she said that if I was extremely quiet, that I could enter the room and watch, as long as I wasn't a source of distraction. Cool... The room in question was not much bigger than my garage. At the windows end of the room was a slightly raised platform, with the flag of the United States on the left side, the flag of the State of Washington on the right side, and seating for the Appeals board members behind the panels that kept the public from seeing the members pants and shoes. There was a chair and a name plate for each board member, but there were no board members behind them. Instead, there were 4 really old white guys sitting at the four corners of a square conference table on the right side of the room. There were several honest to god looking pews in rows on either side of the room for spectators to sit on, obviously purchased some years before from a church and government supply house. I sat and watched the OWGs for a long time, and I never did figure out who was representing the county, although I had a good idea of who the petitioner was. He was the one who kept interrupting and gesturing before the speakers were finished talking. Next to him was an especially OWG, whose voice could barely be heard, who sounded like he was somewhat near death. I was later to learn that this man's name was Mr. Mayor (or possibly Mayber), and we were to meet again... This discussion continued, and while there was no clear resolution from my standpoint, it did finish up, with the petitioner and one of the guys that I figured were on the appeal board sharing small talk about some mutual friend that had sold his house for a thirty thousand (or was it three hundred thousand? That seems more likely, as my house apparently appreciated that much just last week!) dollar profit. Not only were these OWGs, they were OWGOBs (old white good 'ole boys) who knew each other. I sensed trouble... That hearing concluded, and Mr. Mayor came over to me. He asked me my name, and what time my hearing was to be. I told him, and he said just a minute, and he left the room. When he came back, he explained that this was meeting room A, and that my hearing was to be held in room B. He mentioned that there were cases of people who missed their hearings because they were waiting in the wrong room. I thanked him, and went out to the reception area and asked the wymyn there where the other room was. They explained that that meeting was taking place by conference call, and that the petitioner wasn't even in the room. This didn't come close to answering my question, and I didn't find out the location of the room until it was time for my hearing. I was directed to take a seat, and asked to wait. Great. I show up early so I can get the lay of the land, and I'm condemned to spend my time in waiting room hell. But this was not to be... Mr. Mayor wandered in and out of the back area, behind the receptionist station. Another guy appeared, not quite as old as the other guys in the other meeting, but older than me. (His hair wasn't COMPLETELY grey, just mostly...) He looked like a used car salesman, and after a bit of small talk, and he explained that there was another petitioner in front of me, but we'd give that group a few minutes to show up. They didn't, and I was ushered into a back room (apparently room B) for my hearing. Other than me, there were three other people in the room, and we proceeded to sit around a T shaped conference table. Across the top of the table was the used car salesman who proceeded to introduce himself, as well as the other people in the room. His name was Don Haldeman, described by the South County Journal (formerly the Valley Daily News) as a North Seattle investment banker with a background in the real estate business, who had served as a part-time examiner hearing tax appeals in previous years. Next to him was a woman who was introduced as Beatriz Apodaca, described in the Journal as a former school superintendent in Alaska, now a resident of Northeast Seattle. (She reminded me of Andrea Martin of Second City Television fame...) These two members of the Board of Appeals explained the procedure for what was to take place: They were the representative members of the larger board, and would hear my petition in this small hearing, and then take their recommendations to the larger board where my petition would actually be decided on. The hearing would be taped, and would be a matter of public record. The other person in the room was introduced as Mr. Mayor who represented the Assessor's office. I would be allowed time to explain why I thought that my property was over-valued, and then the assessor's representative would be allowed to testify why they thought that the property was valued fairly and accurately. They had copies of the original petition that I had submitted when asking the assessor's office for a re-valuation, as well as the extra paperwork and statements that I had supplied at that time. Bea then activated the tape recorder, we all raised our right hands and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and the proceedings began... I'd like to say that the discussion went rather well, but it wouldn't be the truth. I essentially restated the points of my original petition, which can be summarized by saying that the county's database claimed that my property
I was on a roll! There was no way that I could lose! It was obvious that they had doctored the books to rationalize their decision: Price first, rationalization later. I was bullet-proof. Don, the impartial observer that he was intended to be, asked Mr. Mayor if he could explain these discrepancies to the board members. Mr. Mayor showed some confusion, and stood up, explaining that he would go and get the paperwork on the property to help explain. As he left the room, Bea turned off the tape recorder, and we waited. Small talk. I asked how long Bea and Don had been doing this, what kind of people and attitudes presented themselves, their experiences with being on the board, and so on. Chat chat chat... Mr. Mayor came back with a big book he called a folio which was for part of the development that included my property, although the information on my property wasn't in this particular volume. That volume wasn't to be located in the place where it should have been. (I was delighted. In a criminal trial, if the prosecution cannot produce the evidence against the accused, the defendant goes free! This was obviously not a criminal trial, and my balloon was about to be popped.) Mr. Mayor explained that the inspectors had been in my area starting last May, and that their adjustments to the information pertaining to my house had been incorporated into the paper archive starting then, being included as penciled in corrections to the paper copy. It was then apparent that the process wasn't sophisticated enough to have incorporated the changes to the property's status in the computer database by the date in late October (five months later!) that I had made my queries. Therefore, the new valuation of my house had included the changes made over the summer, even though those changes hadn't been seen in the computer records. I was stunned. That means that the legs that my case had been standing on had been kicked away, and I was now falling towards my financial doom. Don wanted to be sure that the folio for my property wasn't available, so Mr. Mayor was asked to go look again to make sure. Mr. Mayor looked old enough that I was concerned that he wouldn't survive the trip, but he went away to wherever they store the folios. More small talk. Bea, Don, and I talked about the further appeals process, Clinton's internet in the schools effort, the foolishness of the county's computer purchasing, programming, and training process, the Kingdome fiasco, web pages in general, and more. I mentioned that I had a page on the militia that Pam Roach was forming, and my treatise on taxes in general, and property taxes in particular. Mr. Mayor came back without the pertinent folio, and I knew I was doomed... Bea started the tape again, and she and Don started asking the damning questions: How had I arrived at the figures for property values that I claimed were warranted for my house? He had done some quick calculations, giving a cost per square foot for the houses that both I and the county had claimed supported our values, pointing out that even the new valuation of the property had significantly lower cost than any of the other properties. Bea asked how the initial purchase of the property had come about, was it through a real estate agent? I had to admit that my answers were not very convincing. The property values that I claimed were actually wishful thinking, with my belief that property values had not been subject to the same pressures that they had a few years previously when everybody and their cousin had been moving in from California, jacking up the local real estate prices. I had to agree that my house had the lowest cost per square footage of any of the examples. And I admitted that the house was purchased, not through an agency on the open market, but through a private seller. The jig was up, and I knew it... As promised, there was no resolution at this meeting. Bea and Don would be taking what they'd learned to the next meeting of the entire board, where the valuation recommendation would be made. By this point, I was dispirited enough to believe that the appeal would not be successful. While the South County Journal reports that 73 percent of property owners who filed an appeal had some sort of reduction in their property values, I no longer expected to be one of the lucky ones. There was one interesting note however. After the meeting had concluded and I was packing up my stuff, Bea asked me for the web address of the page that I made discussing Pam Roach and property taxes. Flattery will get you anywhere, and I'm exceedingly pleased that people would want to read what I've written. I gave her the address and asked her if she would drop me an E-mail line telling me what she thought about what I'd written. The meeting was over, and I left the building... I was going to head on up to the Elysian Brewpub, but traffic was bad, so I decided to head on home. It's just as well I did, because the Sunny Jim Peanut Butter factory was burning right next to the freeway, making traffic on that road just as bad. The destruction of a Seattle landmark somehow must serve as a simile to my whole experience with this round of property tax valuation. Shot down in flames!
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This document was placed here on February 22, 1997, and has been viewed countless times.