Sooner or later, Santa Clara County voters might want to thank Larry Stone for his almost three a long time of service and discover a well-qualified substitute as assessor.
However not this 12 months. We advocate the 81-year-old incumbent as your best option for voters within the June 7 election.
His workplace of 245 staff every year units the tax values for greater than 500,000 properties in Santa Clara County. It’s vital that householders and companies obtain truthful valuations which are used to generate about $6 billion of taxes for native governments and faculties.
Stone has a observe file of stable administration throughout his 27 years as assessor. Sure, he nonetheless loves the highlight greater than he ought to. There’s some validity to the costs that, as an assessor working within the coronary heart of Silicon Valley, he has been gradual to replace the know-how in his workplace.
And we're nonetheless ready for a court docket verdict, anticipated later this 12 months, on Stone’s effort to reverse an appeals panel determination that in 2019 slashed $36 million from his evaluation of Levi’s Stadium. However the total accuracy of his workplace’s value determinations was 99.48% within the newest audit, performed by the state Board of Equalization.
Previous to changing into assessor in 1995, Stone served for 16 years on the Sunnyvale Metropolis Council and two years on the Santa Clara County Planning Fee. He co-founded a Bay Space actual property funding and improvement agency and labored on Wall Road as a monetary supervisor. And relating to assessments, Stone’s expertise dwarfs that of his challenger, Andrew Crockett.
Crockett grew to become Stone’s sole challenger after Santa Clara Valley Water District Director Gary Kremen dropped out of the race following an accusation that he despatched semi-nude photos of himself and his longtime associate to a former marketing campaign staffer.
He's centering his marketing campaign round his need to uncover and talk knowledge from the assessor’s workplace that can assist public officers clear up the area’s housing and climate-change challenges.
These are worthy targets, however they aren’t the first accountability of the assessor. Moreover, in his interview Crockett couldn't articulate a single level of information that would assist public officers clear up these issues.
Crockett, an authorized accountant, has a stable historical past of volunteer work locally. We hope he'll keep lively in that position and acquire some wanted political expertise.
It’s not fairly time for brand spanking new blood within the assessor’s workplace. This 12 months, voters ought to re-elect Larry Stone.