COUNTY ECONOMY BOOSTS PROPERTIES; ASSESSED VALUATION NEAR $46 BILLION, SPELLS MORE REVENUE.

Byline: Jesse Hiestand Daily News Staff Writer

Ventura County's expanding economy has driven up the assessed valuation to nearly $46 billion, generating more money for schools and cities, and helping the supervisors balance their budget for this year.

``The economy is starting to turn around,'' Chief Deputy Assessor Daryl Brown said. ``We're starting to see more property sales than in the past, and those properties are selling at an increased value.''

Total taxable property was assessed at $45.98 billion for 1997-98, a 3.27 percent increase over last year's total, Brown said.

The higher valuation will generate more property tax revenue for local governments, including an additional $1.2 million to help the county close a shortfall in its new budget.

``This is precisely what we had indicated in the final budget,'' Chief Administrative Officer Lin Koester said.

This year's assessment ``shows that we're basically in a recovery mode from the standpoint of real estate prices and values going up,'' he added.

Ventura County will receive about $80 million of the $440 million in property tax revenue, Brown said. The balance is divided among local cities, school districts, special assessment districts and the state.

The county Fire Department receives about 10 percent, while the library system gets slightly less than 1 percent, Auditor-Controller Thomas Mahon said.

The Assessor's Office is responsible for identifying all taxable properties in the county, including homes, office buildings, boats and aircraft. Using records and field inspections, its agents assess the value of only those properties that are new, have changed ownership or have undergone construction.

If, for example, a home is sold at more than its originally assessed value, the sale amount is typically used to determine its new value.

The value of each home not sold is automatically raised 2 percent each year under Proposition 13, the landmark law that restructured California's tax system in 1978.

All of these changes add to the county's total taxable value, as does new construction.

The Assessor's Office will now turn over the figures to the Auditor-Controller's Office to draft the actual property tax bills, using a simple formula based on 1 percent of the assessed value.

The owner of a $200,000 home would have to pay 1 percent of that value, or $2,000, in property tax. The total tax bill can be more if a city or special district tacks on other assessments.

This year's assessment involved 227,678 parcels of real property, such as homes; 28,152 personal property accounts; 17,675 boats and other vessels; and 843 aircraft.

Assessors processed 30,030 changes of ownership of real property and 6,642 items of new construction.

There were 126,721 exemptions from property taxes allowed in the amount of $1.97 million for hospitals, schools, churches, colleges and other organizations and individuals.

The assessment-roll figures serve several purposes, Brown said. They mark the first step in the actual tax-collection process. Cities, special districts and the county can use the figures to estimate how much revenue they will get each year. And they act as a barometer of the county's overall economy.

The total value of assessed property almost always increases each year, largely due to automatic property value hikes called for by Proposition 13. But the actual percentages vary with the state of the economy.

``Property values peaked at about the end of 1988, and then started a downward spiral,'' Brown said, noting the recession of the early 1990s caused the annual increase to shrink to about 1.5 percent.

``The market value of properties decreased, and those that did sell sold for only slightly more'' than their previously assessed value, he said.

The 3.27 percent increase this year, more than double that of last year, shows a strengthening of Ventura County's economy, Brown said.

Mahon added: ``We're definitely on the upswing. We have every expectation that (the real estate market) will continue to grow.''

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Chart: VENTURA COUNTY TAXABLE PROPERTY VALUATIONS

While taxable property valuations in Ventura County have increased annually over the past eight years, the percent of increase dropped from 13.51 percent in 1990-91 to a low of 1.48 percent in 1996-97.

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