Board Speeds Up Property Assessment Appeals : Government: With 25,000-case backlog, supervisors vote to revamp hearings and hire temporary help to share the load. The new measures could cut weeks or months off delays now confronting homeowners.

Faced with a daunting backlog of 25,000 assessment appeals from county property owners, the Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to revamp the appeal hearings system and hire about a dozen temporary employees to speed up processing.

The reforms will cost $370,000, but officials said the new measures may shave weeks or months off the waiting period that frustrates thousands of homeowners seeking property tax relief.

“Obviously, the winner in all this is the property owner who’s going to have their property assessed at proper market value,” said Supervisor William G. Steiner, who led the push to expedite the process.

The time savings will not immediately help everyone who appeals, though. Even with the new measures in place, officials expect to have reduced the backlog only 30% by July.

More than 65,000 appeals are awaiting review by the office of Orange County Assessor Bradley L. Jacobs and, at the office’s current pace, that workload would take three years to be cleared, Steiner said. State law mandates that appeals be resolved in two years.

The delays has drawn heated criticism from residents, angered both by the paperwork traffic and the automatic 2% increase that has been tacked onto their property assessments each year.

That yearly increase, along with the steady slide of Southern California property values in a dismal regional economy, prompted thousands of residents in recent years to file for reassessments.

The appealing homeowners’ goal was to pay taxes only on their property’s fair market value, Steiner said, but instead they have been confounded by a slow and confusing process.

The measures adopted Tuesday will add a third appeals board to the two already at work. Those three boards will have regular meetings scheduled for the first time, expand their sessions to a full day instead of just a few hours, and have their workload increased by 50%, a county report shows.

The county will also be making efforts to increase the number of active hearing officers, who meet one-on-one with property owners to help settle appeals before they reach the appeals board.

The county administrative officer’s staff is also looking for sites countywide that will be used to send hearing officers into communities to help homeowners.

Between seven and 10 employees will be added to the assessor’s office staff to help with the 80% of appeals that are settled before reaching an appeals board, said Howard Whitcomb, the office’s quality assurance manager.

“We want to bring people in on the front end, and it’ll start, hopefully, a domino effect and free people up the line,’ Whitcomb said. “We expect this (assistance) to do quite a bit for us.”

Two temporary employees will also be added to the county clerk’s office, which handles the record-keeping and much of the paperwork generated by the assessor’s office. No permanent employees were hired because of the county’s job freeze.