For years, four towns in San Mateo County — including Woodside and Portola Valley — were entitled to millions of dollars in tax revenues that they weren’t getting.
A 1988 state law says towns must get a minimum of 7 percent of the property taxes collected in their jurisdictions. Both Portola Valley and Woodside were under that.
But the county controller, who is responsible for allocating property taxes, apparently didn’t know about the law, and the towns didn’t either, according to a report last week by the San Mateo County civil grand jury criticizing officials for failing to abide by the law.
“Of the 17 counties with qualifying cities, San Mateo is the only county in the state that failed to comply,” the report says.
The situation changed last year when Portola Valley officials got wind of the law and pressured the county to pay up. Last November, the county conceded, paying the four towns $2.6 million of the $8.1 million they had failed to allocate over the previous 15 years, the grand jury report says.
The payments were for just the previous two years. Whether the county will pay any more is up in the air.
Town officials came in for blame, too, for failure “to protect their own interests.” The report notes that the four towns — Coma and Half Moon Bay are the other two — received in 1988 at least 23 bulletins about the law from the League of California Cities.
Portola Valley Councilman Ed Davis took slight umbrage with this criticism, noting the town had no administrator in 1988 and the town clerks had their hands full.
Woodside Town Manager Susan George said she thinks the grand jury “did a good job of explaining a rather complicated (matter) and I don’t have any disagreements with the recommendations and findings.”
A big issue remains: Are the towns entitled to any more money? Portola Valley and Woodside have hired a tax lawyer, but negotiations with the county are “hung up” on trying to figure out how much the towns are owed, said Davis.
The county controller’s office asserts that because the state found no problems during periodic audits of the county’s property tax allocations, the county owes nothing more.
