LAKEPORT, Calif. – On Tuesday the Board of Supervisors received an update on a tax default property sale set for next year and heard from Clearlake city officials about the millions of dollars in tax revenue they’re unable to collect without tax sales happening regularly.

Treasurer-Tax Collector Barbara Ringen gave the Board of Supervisors the update on Tuesday morning.

A tax sale that had been set to take place earlier this year was canceled, and over the summer members of a board-appointed ad hoc committee – including Supervisor Bruno Sabatier and Supervisor Moke Simon – appointed to work with Ringen on issues with her department had asked Ringen to resign, which she initially did but later pushed back on giving a firm date, as Lake County News has reported.

On Tuesday, Ringen said the next tax sale is scheduled for the beginning of March, with the work to complete the list of parcels now under way. Once that list of parcels is completed, she will bring it to the board at the end of October or the beginning of November.

Other steps in the process include notifying taxing agencies and nonprofits to give them adequate time to object or to bid on tax defaulted properties, noticing the State Controller’s Office and then sending the parcels list to the company that searches for interested parties. Once that list is complete, the county will notify those parties, Ringen said.

Next, the county will send its online auction contractor, Bid4Assets, the parcel list 45 days before the start of the auction. Thirty days before the auction begins, the information will go live on the Bid4Assets Web site so potential bidders can do their due diligence, Ringen explained.

After the auction, Bid4Assets will notify the winners, who must provide funds within three business days. Ringen said the company also will refund bid deposit to bidders who were not successful.

Bid4Assets will provide the county with a report within a week of the end of the auction and then wire the funds from the auction, which Ringen said the county will deposit. Her office will then provide reports to the auditor’s and assessor’s offices, review parcels for any excess proceeds and then file the deeds to the new owners.

Supervisor Bruno Sabatier, whose district includes Clearlake, asked Ringen how the properties were chosen to be included. Ringen said her office has been in communication with the cities and encouraged them to provide information about what properties they would like prioritized for sale.

Sabatier said he had a recent conversation with a potential developer in Clearlake who is being prohibited from doing a larger project because of surrounding tax defaulted properties, some of them with unpaid taxes dating back to 1986.

Ringen said the developer issue sounded like it involved unbuildable lots, which involve a different type of process, a closed bid sale, in which only contiguous property owners could purchase them.

Supervisor Moke Simon the ad hoc committee had asked Ringen to do the report to make sure they were on track, and to lay out the timelines and time frame for the community and the board.

He thanked Ringen for the report. “We need to be having these tax sales.”

Clearlake officials point to millions in unpaid taxes on properties

Clearlake City Manager Alan Flora spoke to the board about the tax default property issue, noting he’s pleased to hear there is a sale planned for March.

A few weeks ago he requested from Ringen’s office the list of all the tax defaulted properties in Clearlake. “Currently there’s approximately 3,400 properties of almost 17,000 properties in the city of Clearlake that are at some level of tax default,” Flora said.

Those properties – totaling about 20 percent of all of Clearlake’s properties – have a total debt owed of $5.3 milion, said Flora.

Some of the properties have been in default since 1981, with hundreds of properties that have had unpaid property tax for more than a decade, Flora said.

He said the properties are held by individuals, trusts, out-of-state corporations, title companies and banks, and there are situations city officials call “ghost properties” where they’ve been released either through probate or another cause, with no one holding an interest.

Flora said the Lake County Sanitation District and the county of Lake have 10 properties for which they are listed as the owners on tax-defaulted properties in the city of Clearlake. “Someone needs to look into that.”

The properties in Clearlake that currently are eligible for tax sale – having been in default for five years or more – total 1,500, or 9 percent, of total properties in the city with $1.74 million owed, Flora said.

Flora said those propertie are compounding blight problems in the community. “These properties need to be sold,” he said, adding, “It’s critical that those properties are available for reinvestment.”

He said he wanted to facilitate as many of those properties in Clearlake going up for sale as possible.

Flora said everyone suffers when the tax sales don’t happen, explaining that the county has a “Teeter fund” that requires it to front sales tax proceeds to taxing entities for properties that are in default.

If that money doesn’t need to be fronted, those are general fund discretionary dollars that can be used to fund needed county services, Flora said. “You’re essentially paying out cold hard cash every year that this problem continues to grow larger.”

Flora asked how many properties are slated to be put up for auction in March. Ringen said she was budgeted to sell 300 parcels. She did not have information at the meeting about how many of the parcels are in Clearlake.

Clearlake Police Chief Andrew White told the supervisors about the importance of sales from a code enforcement perspective, explaining that one of the key ways the city can force a property to clean up is to add costs onto the tax rolls and have it be sold.

He said he doesn’t know if they’ll ever get ahead by just selling 300 parcels per sale. While he said he understands staffing and budgeting limitations when it comes to increasing tax sale numbers, “I think you can’t afford not to do it.”

Explaining an issue with “ghost properties,” White said there has been an effort to resolve issues with one such property for years, citing a 2004 letter to the city from the state. That property has accumulated more than $10,000 in back taxes and is a fire danger.

Supervisor Rob Brown asked Ringen if they could contract out the process. Ringen said she didn’t know of an entity that does it.

She said that in future tax sales, they could increase the parcel number offered to 500.

In response to Flora’s request to place more Clearlake parcels on the list, County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson said the county needed to take a balanced approach, and that other jurisdictions should have their priorities reflected. Board Chair Tina Scott agreed.

Sabatier said he wanted to support Ringen in adding more parcels, and suggested having a five-year plan on how to tackle what can look like an unmanageable number of properties.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.