Property Tax

Alright, I do a bunch of work in real property tax, and there are a few things I need to unload.

First, Salt Lake County.  The county assessor's office has no idea what they are doing.  And on a number of occasions when they do know, they're not entirely forthcoming.  They don't know how business entities work.  A few years ago they were tossing out all sales where a trust was selling as not being arm's length.  Turns out they had no idea a trust could own property and thought these were all trustee's foreclosure sales.  They don't know how corporate financing works.  They think that because two investment vehicles were created by the same bank and one gets into financial straits, property sales by the other are distress sales because its just raising money that will flow straight to the other vehicle.  This is a level of Dunning-Kruger reminiscent of Karen Martinez and her Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight at the Salt Lake SEC 10-15 years ago.  They have no idea much of the international commercial real estate market is now on line, that bid rooms are set up there rather like with construction bidding, that typically there is no struck price and the buyer picks the bid that's the best fit, and these transactions are typically run through major international law firms.  I know Utah's a backwater, but come on.

And then of course there's the stuff where they know better but do it anyway.  Like pretending to have subdividing authority to chop an economic unit up.  Like removing the haz-mat tag from a property.  Like reclassifying a building to something it isn't just so they can jack up the value/sf.  Like pretending there haven't been recent sales of a certain type of building so they have to go back to 2020 and 2021 and 2022 when lending rates were half what they are now just so they can drive the cap rates down and send assessed values into orbit.

And the mayor and the council and the tax admin office cover it all up.  Especially tax admin, which ignores any evidence and any reality that interferes with affirming the assessor.  And it all stinks like last week's diapers.

On to Washington.  In 2023 the legislature passed a bunch of laws intended to expand urban affordable housing, mostly through increasing density.  They'll probably increase density, but I seriously question whether they'll do a damned thing about affordability.  And I believe one of them, HB 1337, is a ticking bomb.  It requires cities within urban growth areas to allow for two accessory dwelling units (ADUs) per lot.  That means ADU approvals will be pretty much automatic as long as health and fire codes are met.  Which means the assessor will start valuing empty spaces as ADUs.  That basement area your kid used to live in but is empty since they moved out?  Better relet it, because the assessor is going value it as revenue producing space, and your property value is about to spike yet again.  It won't do squat to fix the affordable housing shortage, but it could well drive Ma and Pa out of their home.  I wonder who might show up to snap up properties like this?  It's such a mystery.

The Tangerine Latrine's Shit Show

Man, this mess is worse than even I thought it would be.  The Tangerine Latrine, the Muskrat, and their merry mob of thugs aren't interested in just taking power.  They're intent on a full-on rape and run.  They're playing this as End Game, and at the rate they're going, they may make it happen.  We're about to live Game of Oligarchs, but with climate change looming in the background, so we may end up living Fallout.  But these goons don't care because they're all convinced they're Enclave.  I hope I live long enough to see them realize there isn't enough room for all of them and start picnicking on one another.

It's our own damned fault, really.  We didn't do the heavy lifting necessary to make the system work for us, certainly not since WWII.  We didn't replace the Constitution, even though it needed replacing from the start.  We acted like Mormons, pretending the thing was divinely inspired, rather than admitting it was just an ugly compromise between slave owners masquerading as farmers and land speculators masquerading as merchants to keep all real power in the hands of white, propertied, Christian men while pretending to share it.  And we never corrected this, the result being the 1% made sure we couldn't have nice things.  The barest in civil rights.  The minimum in employment, workplace, and personal autonomy laws.  Hells, even Obamacare barely passed muster under this Constitution according to the Extreme Court.  And they cemented it all with Citizens United, which opened the money gates.

And now even our vaunted rule of law is being exposed for what colonized peoples have always known it to be: a device to protect and preserve the position and power of the 1%.