Effort to tax legally tricky
Some in Healdsburg would like to tax the owners of homes that sit vacant most of the time, but California voters have made that a difficult task.
At Monday’s Healdsburg City Council meeting, a discussion on whether to levy a tax or assessment on “second homes” began with a primer on property tax law from the city attorney.
After explaining that Proposition 13 (passed in 1978 by voters wary of rising property taxes) would prevent the city from adding an ad valorem (Latin for “according to value”) tax on certain homes and going on to explain that Proposition 218 (passed in 1996 to limit fees imposed by local governments), Healdsburg City Attorney Samantha Zutler told the council that the only narrow path to taxing the owners of second homes was likely a parcel tax approved by voters.
“A parcel tax is the most feasible,” said Zutler, in response to council questions. “The challenge would be showing that second homes cause a great impact on a service than other homes.”
Given that vacant homes use less electricity, generally don’t create much of an impact on local roads and services, but still pay property taxes (which include support for the hospital and local schools), the justification for a special tax seemed shaky.
In fact, the council could not agree at first on why it was having the discussion, to preserve housing for locals or to generate income for affordable housing programs.
“The impetus to look at this is to generate income,” said city councilmember Brigette Mansell, who later amended her comment to add that losing housing stock for full time residents was the important issue.
As the discussion moved forward, the council focused on the loss of housing to part time residents as the problem it was trying to address, but struggled with how to define a “second home,” finally deciding that “vacant home” was a more accurate description.
“This issue has a tangible effect on the quality of life in our community,” said councilmember Joe Naujokas, adding that “we need more data,” about how many vacant homes are in the community, especially after members of the public have cited figures ranging from 10 percent to more than half of the community being vacant homes.
Councilmember David Hagele said he had “zero interest in going down that path” of taxation, but agreed that finding out how many vacant homes there are in town would be valuable. Hagele noted that when he campaigned for a city council seat last year, “if you knocked on a door on Tucker Street, you knew that the next voter would be six doors down.”
Councilmember Leah Gold, who campaigned on taxing vacant home owners, said “I’m not ready to give up on the idea” and suggested a study of electric utility records would show electricity usage patterns and indicate when homes are occupied and when they’re not.
City Manager David Mickaelian said he would come back to the council with a recommendation on how to gather and verify data on vacant home ownership in the community.
