The Santa Clara County assessor's office is rarely this busy. On Monday, home owners are calling and coming in with notification cards in hand and worry written all over their faces.
The assessor blames the inaccurate property tax assessment notices on a printing error. The cards are meant to give home owners ample time to challenge assessments if necessary, before the tax rolls close, in July. Some notifications list the wrong value, location, mailing address, and parcel number for the homes.
"We're dealing with it rapidly. We will send out correct notification cards to every property owner impacted," said Larry Stone, a Santa Clara County assessor.
The misprints are going to homes in 12 different zip codes in San Jose. Of the 471,000 cards sent out, 60,000 could be wrong.
"We want them to catch it before they send out the notification," said Gina Kalbali, of KAL Investments.
Gina Kalbali is frustrated. She says the county over-valued not just one of her investment homes, but three, by $100,000 each!
"You kind of wonder, if this is an error, could there be more that we're not aware of and then the second thing, it takes time and effort to call these people and find out what's going on," said Gina Kalbali.
There may never be a clear answer. The Hayward based company that printed the cards says reps are looking into it.
The Assessor's office was able to isolate those 12 zip codes most likely to have received notification cards containing errors. It is also unlikely that all property owners within the following zip codes are affected. Once the Assessor's Office has identified which property owners received the wrong information, the office plans to mail those taxpayers a corrected notification as quickly as possible.
Zip codes:
- 95112
- 95113
- 95115
- 95116
- 95117
- 95118
- 95119
- 95120
- 95121
- 95122
- 95123
- 95124
