Tax Snafus : Citizen Complaints Over Foul-Ups on Property Levies Rising

For years, J. Peter Houlberg did not pay his Los Angeles County property taxes, but not because he did not try.

A retired steel contractor who lives in Santa Barbara, Houlberg sent letters to the treasurer-tax collector’s office, fired off mailgrams, made telephone calls and finally drove to Los Angeles to try to get the county to say how much he owed.

Still no luck. Thinking he had straightened out his taxes after an earlier mix-up, Houlberg first received a $906 refund in 1986 that made no sense and then received no tax bill at all over the next two years.

“Here I am reading how the county is pleading for money, and I’ve been trying to pay my property tax bills for years,” Houlberg said Tuesday. “It was incredible.”

And it got worse.

Last year when Houlberg tried to sell his properties in Santa Monica, he found that his delinquent tax bills now jeopardized the multimillion-dollar deal. In frustration, he wrote last November to the treasurer-tax collector’s office with another complaint. When he heard nothing, he called and then followed with two more letters. Still nothing.

Officials Responded

Only after a Times reporter began making inquiries about Houlberg did county officials respond--and finally rectify the problem.

“It was our mistake,” admitted Elaine Valdez, a supervisor in the treasurer tax-collector’s office. “All I can say is that we apologize to Mr. Houlberg. We try to do our best here.”

So, why was Houlberg not receiving his tax bills? It turns out that the county was using a West Los Angeles address for Houlberg where he had not been since 1981, a fact that Houlberg had pointed out in his letters and phone calls to the county.

Although county officials insist that the Houlberg snafu is extreme, complaints from citizens and businesses about the county’s property tax system seem to be increasing, judging from the grumbling on the Board of Supervisors.

“We’ve always had a certain amount of problems over the years,” board Chairman Deane Dana said Tuesday, “but there are even greater problems today, and we really have to do something about it.”

There are no precise figures on the number of public complaints regarding property taxes. But with three departments involved in the process--the auditor-controller, assessor and treasurer-tax collector--handling 2.1 million property tax bills annually, errors are not uncommon.

County officials admit that problems can be slow to resolve, especially with a computer system only in its infancy. In addition, county officials contend that many mistakes can be traced to property tax owners themselves who may be confused over their tax bill or who may be unfamiliar with tax requirements.

But more and more of the blame has been laid on the county departments.

Supervisor Ed Edelman said he was so upset with constituent calls about the treasurer tax-collector that he got the board to approve money last November to install a special phone system to better handle taxpayer questions.

Supervisor Pete Schabarum was so miffed at what he viewed as the lack of response to his constituents by Assessor John Lynch that he publicly accused Lynch last week of not cooperating with board efforts to resolve those complaints.

In his defense, during an interview, Lynch said, “We’re trying to move fast, and we’re doing the best we can. Yes, there are problems, and we do make mistakes. We don’t want to walk around with egg on our chin but that happens, and when we do, we have to eat our mistakes.”

One of those mistakes was omitting Larry Perryman’s name as an owner of a 5-acre parcel in Acton in the tax assessment rolls. According to Perryman, when he tried to refinance his property to build a house, he learned that he was not listed as the owner of the property. When he confronted the assessor’s office about the omission, he said he got little help.

“It cost me the financing on my house,” a bitter Perryman said. “I lost my loan and was subsequently forced into foreclosure proceedings, which is ruining my credit. All I know is that this has screwed up my life.”

Legal Description

Roy Sharman, chief of a new unit fielding citizen complaints in the assessor’s office, told The Times that an employee had “misread the deed” and legal description listing Perryman as the owner of a different property.

“Certainly, we’re going to correct the mistake,” said Sharman, adding that the error was “an honest mistake” by one of the 30 to 55 “coders” who must review 400,000 property deeds a year.

The board is awaiting the results of a county reappraisal of the treasurer-tax collector’s role in gathering property taxes. For taxpayers like Houlberg, any resulting improvement would be welcome.

Houlberg said he can only hope his problems are over. The refund check, he learned, was sent to him because county officials thought wrongly that it was an overpayment for a 1984 property tax bill. As for his current bills, Houlberg said the county has agreed to accept a payment of $8,267.64 and waive nearly $3,000 in penalties.

“I tell you I’m dumbfounded,” he said. “They gave me a free ride for a couple years on the county’s money. I wonder how many other people are out there just like me, just trying to pay our taxes or simply (trying to) find out what we owe.”