 First of all, I would like to thank you all for coming out today. My name is Linda Bocanaga, and I'm the vice president for the West Side Neighborhood Association. And I'm also the restaurant owner here, so we're going to get this meeting started. And Belma, you ready? Here's Belma Pena, our president. Thank you, Belma. Thank you. Thank you for being here, and I just said I'm Belma Pena with the West Side Neighborhood Association's coalition. Sorry. And first, we're going to do it a little bit different this time. We're going to do the announcements first. The presidents that are here from the coalition is just going to do, you know, they're going to do their announcements as far as what's going on in the neighborhood. So Rudy Lopez from Thomson Neighborhood Association. Like Belma said, I'm Rudy Lopez. I'm with the president of Thomson Neighborhood Association. I just got, like, three or four announcements to make real quick. We got some projects that we're working on in the Thomson area. The first one, and I passed out flyers, so you all should have some flyers, but the first one is our Ciglovia. That's going to be March 24th from 10 to 6 o'clock. If you all ever heard of Ciglovia, that's where they go and close the streets so that folks can actually ride their bikes and walk around that day and as close to being their traffic. So that's what we're doing over in the Thomson area. We're inviting you out to go up and spend a day walking down Joe McMullen, Rosalind and Thomson. We'll have several things out there. We're going to have a lot of city informational tables. We're going to have vendors in the park. We're going to have a fitness stage, a fitness van. We'll be raffling off bicycles, raffling off tickets for AFC theater, so come and join us on that day. It's going to be spectacular. You're going to have a good time. The second thing that we have going on, and again, you should have flyers for that, is we've partnered up with Kaboom, a non-profit in Carmack to build a new playground in Kennedy Park. The only stipulation with that, what we're working with when working with Kaboom, is that we've got to find volunteers to help us build a park in the day. So you should have flyers out there and if you don't, you can get them at the table back here. It has a website where you can register to volunteer. Now, the third thing we have going on is we have a bus trip going to Kickapoo. And that's going to be May 26. All the money that we make off the bus trip is going to scholarships for students over at Kennedy High School. So if you're a student that as well, grab a flyer, give me a call or give my vice president a call. Let us know that you all want to go and we'll set you up for that. Lastly, one of the things that Valbo is asking me about is, have you all seen the construction that's going on over at Kaboos and Highway 90? Do you all know what that is? Okay, that's going to be a back to emergency hospital. It's emergency hospital. It's an emergency hospital. So this is going to be a lot like, have you seen the emergency hospital for Santa Monica in 35? Yes. Okay, it's going to be just like that. Okay, that one's going to vote 80 to 100 patients. It's a 24-hour care hospital. They'll be able to do inpatient and take care of patients overnight, whatever all they need to stay. They'll be doing surgeries there as well. You have an emergency, you break an arm, you cut yourself, you go straight down there and they'll accept you. As you all know, the start for the construction, you all saw that about January, and the construction should be completed about December or January next year. Just keeping it out for that. I think it's a really great thing for the neighborhood. I can't tell you how much I fought for that thing to go in there. It's great for the neighborhood, right? I think that's all we have for Thompson Neighborhood Association. Again, we have several projects going on. I need help with some of them. So I'm always looking for volunteers. Come out for a syclovia. Enjoy yourself for the day. We'll have vendors, food, food trucks, car shows, all sorts of things going on. All right. Thank you very much, guys. Richard Garcia from Memorial Heights Association. Thank you. Richard Garcia from Memorial Heights Neighborhood Association. We had our meeting last week, and this is, I'm not speaking to the constituents that the registered voters here, but this coming Saturday, I put some flowers up there. They're having a membership drive. It's free. It's open to the public, and it's from 1, 2, 3 p.m. And like I said, this is not to endorse any politics or anything. It's just information that's free to register to vote. And you want to get them to ties also. That's what's going to happen. It's from 1, 2, 3 p.m. and I put some flowers up here up on this table. So feel free to welcome and hope to see you there. Thank you. Hello. My name is Eugenio Rodriguez. I'm with the Loma Vista Neighborhood Association, also involved in the Old Highway 90 Coalition. I just want to give you all another on the Old Highway 90. What is occurring right now is that we went ahead and gathered some money so that there could be a third-party survey to be done. These will be mail-outs. So if you live from Commerce Street all the way to Castorville, between Commerce and Castorville Road and South Joaquin and 151 to Callahan, you will receive a ballot where you should receive a ballot. We're not sure what percentage will receive them, but please be aware this ballot will be out there in which it will ask you in favor of bringing Old Highway 90 back. 90, over 90 percent of the business owners along the corridor want it back. Unfortunately, some of them are empty lots, so it doesn't, we can't say 100 percent, but they really need our help. So if you do receive the ballot, please go ahead and fill it out. It's a yes or no if I'm not mistaken. Thank you. Okay. Now we have a million for this. How's everybody doing? I was going to do some stand-up comedy. So again, like Velma said, my name's Amelia Valdez and I'm the president of Proud to Say the Historic West Side Resident Association. I also have my scribe here, Natalie Guerrero is also here. So we've been actually overwhelmed with a lot of things that are going on on the west side and that's the boundaries. If you can imagine a big rectangle inside Laredo, inside 35, inside Wisconsin, inside San Samora, along the Alazon Creek somehow, right? Demolition, which is really sad. Also, we have a fence that is going to go up at the Placita because we fought and pushed that back, but eventually they're going to put some form up and see. So we've been working through some of that work, but we're going to work on getting historically designated, hopefully, which gives us incentives for homeowners. If you're 65, of course, your taxes are already frozen, right? But if you're a homeowner under 65, there's incentives under for property taxes and there's already incentives like home rehab and things like that. So we're, as the Historic West Side Resident Association, we're going to walk door to door, try to knock on doors, educate people, and if we can get historically designated, no more demolitions we're hoping. So we're working through that. And also, we're working through a campaign, Alameda Esperanza Peace and Justice Center and the West Side Preservation Alliance. Mi Vario no Se Vende. Our residents are complaining that they're getting letters in the mail about buying their homes. They're getting knocks on the doors and they're getting things in their mailboxes or whatever, right? So we have these signs to kind of say Mi Vario no Se Vende. So don't come around here because this is very important. Now, they're still going to come, but this is something like this women's business, right? So if you want to sign, you can sign up and be a part of Cafe Citos. Now, Cafe Citos are little meetings that you can have at your homes and you can talk about, you'll be surprised how many people are getting these letters and you can have conversations within your neighborhood with a Cafe Cito, which is becoming very popular now. But the sad thing about this, they're stealing the signs. They're taking them and then putting something else, a lot of profanity on them and things like that. It's like, it's really sad that we're just getting a momentum on this, but we will keep pushing and putting these signs on the yards. So we're working to the Pico Lofts and Alazan Lofts, which hopefully will not happen. We're getting pushed because it's not affordable. You're talking about 200 units, four feet high, all kinds of craziness coming, coming our way. It's probably already coming our way. Every second Tuesday of the month, April 9th, we're going to have an accountability campaign. We're going to have our candidates like Shirley Gonzalez and Anthony Gries to join us and you can come and join us, win your questions and we're going to try to hold them accountable for what's going on on the website. Okay. Thank you so much. 1310 Guadalupe Parish Hall at 6 p.m. And you can see me afterwards and I can give you more information. Okay. Thank you. Okay. We also have Delia Trimble from she is the president of Friends of the Library from Los Males Library. Just want to make sure all of you know that Los Males Library is celebrating its 50th anniversary and on the 23rd of March, and there's some more flyers over there, we're having a program starting at one o'clock. We're going to have Shirley and the library director, a number of other thing to Terry's for our formal program. And then we're going to have a reception and then family activities until five o'clock. So we're going to have a STEM workshop for the children, a science workshop that our Lady of the Lake is coordinating for us, our Lady of the Lake University. And the library itself is doing a whole lot of activities. They're going to be ongoing activities all afternoon and then we're having a Papel Picada workshop from 3.30 to 4.30. So all of you are invited to come and help us celebrate Los Palmas Library on the website. And again, I also every month I try to bring the calendars, so there could be calendars on the table over here. A lot of activities going on at the library this week for spring break. A lot of activities not only at Los Palmas Library but at all branch libraries. So again, I invite you to come and celebrate with us on the 23rd of March, which is a week from Saturday. Thank you. Tina would you like to say make an announcement for your neighborhood association? As soon as we finish with the announcements we're going to go on with the meeting. I just wanted to make sure we bring it. Yes. Hello everybody. My name is Dina Serrano. I'm the Vice President of Community Workers Council. Our boundaries are from 151 between Old Highway 90 and Commerce, always to 36th Street. So we're pretty much by the highway. We're having a masquerade ball. It's going to benefit our community. It's going to go to scholarships and we do feed the officers. We do that event. It's going to be on March 30th on a Saturday and tickets are $20 and it's going to take place at the food bank. And we're going to have food, music. So if you're interested please come to me and if you could donate $20 we'll give you a ticket. What time? Thank you. What time? Oh it starts at seven. Seven to eight? Yes, seven to ten. Do you wear a costume? Yeah, like a masquerade ball. A masquerade ball. A masquerade ball. At the Villarro Hall at the food bank. That's where it's going to take place. So I hope everyone could join us being party in the West Side. Good evening everybody and it's great seeing you here. My name is Henrietta Quetta Flores Lagrange. I am part of this West Side and what I'm trying to do is we're almost at the final stages of finishing a proposal. What I want is to get a minor program to repair homes on the West Side because my heart is on the West Side. So if I I'm asking all of you if this comes forth I would like for all of you to join me because there's a lot of people like they were saying about their homes. I get those letters too but I know better. They're telling these people oh your house is worth like maybe 20,000 but they say oh well I like to get it fixed. Oh but it's going to cost you 50,000. Why don't you sell it to me for 20,000? We need to stop this. So what I would like for you is I volunteer for a CASAs organization and I'm the treasurer and the treasurer has a lot of work because she's she writes the checks and pays the bills but I don't get paid and it's okay but my concern is I want this project to go forward. So I hope each and every one of you when this happens because I see it happening I want all your support because there's a lot of people even in this room that need the help. Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and introduce the guest today as you know we are having one of the topics is understanding your property taxes and he is the chief appraiser Michael Amisketa and also we have Arita Fernandez. I think we missed somebody wrong. What? Where's your hand? Yeah. Did you want to say something Terry? Oh I did say I did say we're getting associations. So we have Lujo Park, Terry Kilmer, president. We also have Mr. De Leon from Los Jardines. Did I miss anything? I was going to enter Cynthia Spielman with tier one and Beacon Hill. Now I got off track and anybody else? Did I miss anybody? No. We're good. Okay. We have Anita Fernandez. She's going to do the presentation. The state representative can't be here today because he's in Austin. Her name is Anita Fernandez and then we also have Richard Costa. He's going to do the another presentation and right now we're going to have Cynthia Spielman. I'm going to bring her up because she's going to facilitate the discussion because whenever the presentation is when the presentations are done we're going to do the questions and answers afterwards. So she's going to facilitate that so that we can stay on track. That way everybody gets to ask a question and we can move on smoothly. So I'd like to introduce Cynthia Spielman. We'll have a 15 minute question and answer period after each presentation. We respectfully ask you to keep your question at one minute and the reason is there are so many people here and we're so thankful but we need to be respectful of everybody's need to ask questions and the total will be 15 minutes. So I'd like to hand over the mic to Michael Abesquita who is our appraiser and a really wonderful speaker. Well it's good to see you all tonight. Anita are you sure you don't want to go first? Mine's a little longer than yours. I actually would like to segue into that because your boss and I work together a whole lot trying to help these people hang on to their houses. Thank you. I will yield the floor to the lady. Good evening my name is Anita Fernandez. I serve as chief of staff for state representative Diego Bernal and we have a good portion of the west side not all of the neighborhoods that are represented here we cover but we do cover some of you all so we very much appreciate the invitation this evening. As was mentioned by Belma unfortunately the representative was not able to be here today. He had a school finance meeting with the speaker's office this afternoon in Austin and so he had to be there for that meeting but we were asked to be here because we have a couple of bills that will hopefully as Mr. Abesquita said help families stay in their homes should they get through this legislative session but before I get into that I just kind of want to give a recap on what we're doing and where we are as an office. We started the session on January the eighth and we are about halfway through the session the 86 legislative session will finish on May 27th so on Memorial Day that will be our last day if we do not finish though there may be a chance that we come back for a special session the only thing we are constitutionally obligated to pass this legislative session is our budget so as long as we get the budget done by the 27th we won't necessarily have to come back but there are some very uh high topic hot topic issues going on right now like property tax reform and also school finance reform and so those are some pretty heavy lifts and so there is a chance that we will get called back into a special session which means we'll go back in July and work until we get to a resolution that all people involved in all parties involved can agree to the representative sits on three committees currently he is the vice chairman of the committee on public education he is also this session for the first time on the transportation committee which is exciting for us because there are a lot of things going on around transportation particularly in San Antonio and Bear County so that's been a great experience for him and we hope that there will be some good that comes out for our city through that committee and he's also on a committee called local and consent calendars which allows for him to be a part of the process to determine which bills actually get to go to the floor to be heard by the entire house in the legislative body so we've been very very busy he's been very very busy and we've been working very hard for you all and for the constituents there have been total been about four thousand bills filed on the house side and so everyone is working very hard and all of those bills will be referred to their respective committees by the end of this week according to this coming week according to the speaker so if you have questions at any time about any of the bills or the legislative process you can always contact our office directly and I have cards here as well as handouts on the bills that I'm about to speak to you all on so with that I'd like to talk to you about two specific bills that we were asked to come and share about one is known as the anchor neighbor plan which we worked very closely with bear county appraisal district and other appraisal districts around the state of texas to kind of come up with and it's actually a plan that the representative has been thinking about since he first came in to office as a state representative so it's been a couple of years in the making it's the number is hb1102 and I'm going to pass these around if y'all want to take one and then this is thank you so hb1102 is also known as the anchor neighbor plan and so we designed this bill and the representative designed this bill to keep families in their homes that's the ultimate goal and so you'll see that there's really three main components of the bill and if you skip down to the very bottom part that says solution that's where kind of goes through the nuts and bolts of what we're doing so with this bill we're looking at homeowners who have been in their home and paid their mortgage consistently for over 15 years who then in that time frame their property tax payments have increased 120% or more and they've made no significant improvements to the home and that's an important point we get questions a lot there because this is if you had to redo your roof because you needed to you had a whole or it was deteriorating if you needed to add something to make it ADA compliant the maintenance that you need for a home doesn't qualify as a significant improvement we're talking like swimming pools or a huge renovation type of project to your home and so if you can check those boxes then you would become eligible for your property taxes to freeze at what they are when you fill out that application so that is the basic concept of our anchor neighbor plan we ran a lot of numbers thank you we ran a lot of numbers with the comptroller's office we've talked to school districts because if you do know if you read we're talking specifically about school property tax that's going to be frozen and so we wanted to make sure and the representative wanted to make sure that we don't negatively impact the funds that are going into public education and so with all those numbers being run by the comptroller's office meeting with our school districts and other school districts around texas meeting with homeowners such as yourselves because that's really where the idea for the bill came from was constituents who went to the representative and said i'm being pushed out of my home because i cannot pay my property taxes and so that is the anchor neighbor plan it has been referred to the committee on ways and means which is the committee that handles anything to deal with taxes for texas it has a chairman who is a republican chairman boroughs but it has a vice chairman who is a democrat um tre martinez fischer who actually represents uh part of san antonio and so we're hoping that through that working relationship and the working relationships that represent it but now has that this bill will get a hearing and that we will be able to come to some kind of resolution the one thing that i do want to point out to you is this is a very small step in a direction of property tax relief and so is this going to help every texan no but it is designed to help those texans who've been in their homes for an extended period of time and are experiencing this drastic increase in property tax and have experienced that um the next bill that i'd like to talk to you about is hb 240 and this is your payment uh property tax payment installments so currently you can pay your property taxes and installments but it's only limited to two installments what we're proposing is flexibility to move that to five installments or nine installments okay so it's just you're not going to change the amount you have to pay unfortunately with this bill but we're going to try to make it easier for homeowners to pay it this bill was also referred to the ways and means committee um we have not gotten the hearing yet but we are going to push both of these are priority property tax relief bills for our office uh and so if you have stories that you'd like to share um we for these we may put out kind of a call for witnesses or testimony if you will um if you want to share your story with the committee so they can understand how you would be directly impacted positively or negatively um by the bills uh that we file and bills that other offices file and so those are the two main bills there are a lot of bills out there on property taxes some may provide relief others may not provide relief but it is an issue that is important to representative Bernal and something that he has worked very hard during the interim to come up with these plans and that we hope will go somewhere um and and end up as law after the 86th session so if there is nothing else that you want me to address then i think that's all i have thank you mr ramskita question oh right now okay so if any of you'd like to have questions um please stand up and state your name and please take one minute for the question and we'll allow them to answer does anyone have any questions yes sir uh since we will be freezing the school tax and our area needs a lot of funding where's the money going to come from the money that's going to be lost so the state that's the conversation with us we are the state we are well us as the state as in general revenue funds in the school finance conversation that's happening and so the idea is that the state through funds that already exist in monies in our general revenue account will be moved over and shifted to pay for that difference yes correct we're freezing it you're still paying property taxes in it's just the amount is stopped at that level but you know if they continue to go up yes and that's what i mentioned that it is a very fine line and a balance because he is a huge proponent of public education and would never want to cut funding from public education and so his job with proposing this bill is in the conversations for school finance reform to find other mechanisms to put in funding at the state level to make up that difference of the burden on the local property tax when somebody else have a question yes ma'am and my question is is there an organization that can help individuals to understand the tax session process because a lot of times what happens is when you receive that letter when you receive that notice people just kind of go their way and they don't understand the process as far as appeals and all that and and and and that's what we should address yeah we're going to do more presentation yes we'll be on that yes yes there are and I mean yes you can also contact the appraisal district themselves um and and they will help you but that's misdromacy that actually won't be a perfect answer to that question yes i mean Mr. Rickle's stuff sorry any other questions you're welcome thank you all hard parts over with I can't believe I need to let but I'm saying you know Diego when we work together we do a lot of speaking engagements together during the tax season leading up to the legislative session and since the last session we've been working for two years on these bills and we we we'd come up with something and we tear it apart and try to say okay how are they going to shred this bill and we shredded ourselves and we this is about the third iteration of what we've been working on over the last two years frankly I'm surprised they got a hearing there's not many people that advocate for homeowners or people that are in need uh I've spent 25 years working with the legislature and I've never seen anyone quite as tenacious as your boss he refers to himself as a Mexican as a as a minority in every sense of the word when it gets to Austin both because he's Hispanic he's not that tall and he's a Democrat yes but I can't you can make that joke I can't make that joke that's actually his joke yeah and it's just amazing to me because he's he really is a brutal fighter for his community going into that I want to talk to you a little bit I heard uh you know not me barrio well I can tell you my barrio doesn't exist anymore I grew up just east of I-35 east of downtown in Austin I think there's maybe six percent of the Hispanic population that dominated that neighborhood for the better part of a hundred years gone and so the movements that you have going don't give up keep fighting keep supporting guys that are working and ladies that are working for you like Shirley and Diego because they're the ones who are trying to make a change in your life I'm going to give you some information tonight and I wrote it down for you so you don't have to take notes a couple things there's a spreadsheet like this that has a bunch of sales data and it's just general data from the real estate center at Texas A&M University showing how values have trended since 2006 all the way through the recession and all the way back up again san Antonio virtually lost no value during the recession we're not a boom bust economy in san Antonio we've always been to three four percent right now we're actually in a little bit of a downturn we're sitting at about an eight percent increase residentially this year about 12 percent commercially is what it's looking like the importance that is on me back up for just a minute I've got three ladies with me who are here to answer any questions about your personal homestead exemption or any other issue you may have with your house Jennifer my executive assistant she's also in charge of our facebook and twitter Sarianas our customer service manager she's in charge of exemptions customer service and coordinating the appraisal review board where you ultimately have to go protest and harass this the police are you live these are all the ladies that do the work in my office a couple things that are really important to you when you get that appraisal notice it's going to be coming to you on April 1st the protest deadline just like last year changed it's now May 15th for nearly 40 years it's been May 31st or 30 days after the danger get your notice whichever is later now it's May 15th or 30 days after the danger get your notice that deadline is not a bear appraisal district deadline that's a state mandated deadline so please don't miss it if you decide to protest you can protest at any time from January 1st until May 15th if you want to go to my office and drop off your protest you can do that they'll stamp it for you you want to ask for a copy so that you make sure and have proof that you turned it in the other thing I was talking with another lady who said that she kind of got mixed up on hers in the timing you know if you know for sure you're going to be on vacation or you have a trip planned or you're not going to be here in June or July just put on there not to schedule you during that timeframe and they won't schedule you during that timeframe we want to make sure every person has a chance to be heard as I said the notices for 2019 are going to be sent out April 1st so that's not a joke seriously the weekend of April 1st they're going to be in the mail the biggest change to our notice I can't change anything on the front of that notice there's some language looking to change some of that during this session I'm not sure if that's going to happen but on the back of the notice where your protest is that's the side that looks like this it's the other side of this sheet there's a highlighted area that asks you to check the box in red to receive our evidence that is critically important to you because that evidence is the evidence that we use to value your property whether we're talking about market value or whether we're talking about equal and uniform value how your property compares to your neighbors by getting that information you essentially tie our hands where we can't introduce anything else but you can if you have better information that helps you lower your value we want that information generally speaking that happens at your informal process where you meet with one of my staff there's a number of ways first of all how many of you protested before that's good how many of you use the internet okay not as many for those of you who do use the internet we have a couple of different defiling options you can when you get your appraisal notice it's going to have a pin number on your notice you can log into the system and simply file your protest electronically and get scheduled to meet with one of my staff and on that scheduled letter it'll have another date on it where you'll meet with the appraisal review board if you don't have an opportunity to settle with my staff or if you miss your informal the other online appeal is where you do everything online you appeal online they contact you back you'll have a conversation via email you share some data and hopefully if there's resolution that's the end of your protest if not that online appeal supplants for your or takes the place of your informal so you would have already been scheduled for a formal meeting with the board with the appraisal review board now explain more to you about that in just a minute if you're old-fashioned like me you can use the mail or you can just drop it off like I say you can drop it off at my office tomorrow you should understand just because your value goes up doesn't mean your taxes have to go up it generally does because we don't see a lot of tax rates being lowered but the tax appraisal value in and of itself doesn't drive what your tax do is it's both of them the amount of the value which is mandated by law to follow the market which is what appraisal districts do and then the subsequent tax rates that get set by all the tax jurisdictions on this chart I thought it was really important that you see over in this section the University of Texas I'm sorry not the University of Texas the other University the real estate center yes help yourself if anybody didn't get any handouts there's more here the real estate center of Texas A&M tracks information regarding metro markets and rural markets all over Texas San Antonio New Bromples is a huge market and so you'll see that as far back as 2006 they were reporting the average and median residential sale price that's the average and then the middle part between the highest and the lowest for San Antonio was running around 164,500 all the way up until the recession it was trending upward all the way up to 177 and then it went back down to 171 that's not much of a loss and the year after the recession was over with it started tracking upward again right now today the median level price of a home in San Antonio is $243,945 so very much so I can't remember the lady's name and spoke to you about let me buy your house for 20,000 you're gonna have to spend 50 to fix it there's no house in San Antonio sold for 20,000 you can't buy a lot in San Antonio for 20,000 so make sure you protest your property every single year there's a couple of things that are important about that if you don't protest I'll give you your information for free anything you do to my office is going to cost you nothing whether you're applying for an exemption protesting your value or asking for information years ago before Diego was in the house the legislature changed the rules of engagement if I need to call me up and say Mike I want to see the houses that have sold in my neighborhood because we're thinking about selling if I want to do that I could just give her the information today I can't do it unless her property is a subject of a protest if there's no protest pending I can't give you that information as a matter of law so by all means protest even if it's just to get the information one of the other things is you can see back in 2006 this is where the red shows were our foreclosures were they're almost not existing they're less than three percent of all sales our sales volume was one of the highest years we've had over 32,000 transactions in San Antonio Bear County because the values are trending this way the appraisal districts values during that same time are trending as well but they're trending about $20,000 below the average so I don't think we're over appraising everything but I do know that we're following that market and that trend is still trending upward so we talked about the appraisal review board y'all know who that is the review board is just the independent panel of citizens that serve they're actually appointed they used to be appointed by my board of directors the legislature changed that also and so now the appraisal review board is simply a group of citizens that listen to your appeals they're appointed by the local administrative law judge here in San Antonio so as a matter of law they've always been paid out of the appraisal district budget but we can't hire them we can't fire them we can't direct what they do we can't tell them what panels are going to work in we can't tell them what days they work and they just basically are an independent body that listen to the evidence they make deliberations and then they render a ruling once they've ruled just like if you don't get what you need out of my staff my staff isn't the end of the road the review board is not the end of the road there's three opportunities for taxpayers to avail themselves of a lower appraised value which generally turns into a lower tax bill number one this doesn't make sense for most homeowners but you can file suit and district court that's pretty expensive the second thing you can do is you can file for binding arbitration which is up to 500 dollars depending on the level of the value of your home but if you prevail and literally the legislation that created that law says whosoever value the arbiter settles closest to wins so if you prevail that arbitration you get everything back except your 50 dollars the difference I have to pay to the state comptroller and they pay the arbitrator so it's very economical if you think about it the other thing we haven't had very many of these but the state office of administrative hearings that's actually before an actual law judge and that one generally involves lawyers the arbitration doesn't require a lawyer you don't have to have a tax agent sometimes they're done on the phone it's really up to the person who's bringing the appeal if they want to handle it that way and if the arbitrator will allow it exemptions there are a number of exemptions that are available to all of you the over 65 I'm sorry the homestead exemption is an automatic 25 000 off of your school tax bill the legislature did something good I don't say that very often they did something really good last session they allowed us to go back two years instead of just one that value on the exemption is really good but the most important value to you especially in your neighborhoods because your neighborhoods are considered affordable in san Antonio they are below the average they're below the median in terms of pricing it's the area that's seeing the least amount of growth in terms of value so all the developers and all the home buyers are eyeing your homes and trying to buy them up because they're relatively inexpensive compared to other parts of the city and so that 10 cap or limitation on your value as values continue to go up let's just say because I'm not that great at math but if you have a hundred thousand dollar home and your house is all of a sudden in a neighborhood worth a hundred and fifty thousand we still have to reflect that hundred and fifty thousand but if you were a hundred thousand last year you're only going to be 10 percent above that or 110 and then you take your exemptions off of that number and so it's very important to make sure you have your home set exemption as I say all three of these ladies have their iPads and we can look up your property before we leave tonight the over 65 and disability exemption that's very much like what Anito was talking about the benefits that are available to anchor residents are almost identical to what we offer for senior citizens except that the senior citizen exemption is even greater it doesn't affect just the school district if you're over 65 you're entitled to your home set exemption plus an additional 10 000 plus whatever your your taxes are that year your taxes are frozen in san Antonio I love saying this we are the only major metropolitan city in Texas that offers this not Dallas not Austin not Houston not Fort not even El Paso Corpus Christi is the next largest city that does this in san antonio the state mandates that your school taxes are frozen when you turn 65 in san antonio alamo community college district bear county and city of san antonio frees your taxes at what they were the year you become 65 hugely important and it's a huge advantage for you guys the 100% disability exemption for veterans if you are a service connected and are awarded 100% disability by the VA and you are no longer able to work you don't have to pay taxes in Texas profit of taxes that's a Texas statute that's a pretty good benefit if you're less than 100% disabled there are four different levels the db1 which is the first portile of roughly zero to 29% I think will entitle you to a five thousand dollar discount or exemption the db2 which is the next level is 7500 db3 is 10 000 db12 I'm sorry db4 is 12 000 the interesting thing about the disabled veterans not the 100 but the db1234 you can actually apply that to any other property you own so if you're already maxed out on your exemptions on your homestead but you have a little much eat or something maybe you don't have or maybe you have a rent house you can apply it to any property you own anywhere in Texas doesn't have to be your homestead so those are benefits that we have and all that information is available to you for three we had a group I can't remember their name that were soliciting a lot of you not just to buy your property this is a different type solicitation they want to charge you 50% because they see that your property looks like it's your homestead and you don't have one I just told you that the legislature made it possible for me to go back two years now so we can do the current year plus two so if it was this year that you were applying you could get it for 19 18 and 17 some total that exemptions worth about $1050 $300 a year if you multiply that times three years now we're talking about money in the old days when it was just one year we could go back they would charge 25 then 35 then $50 kind of a flat fee now they want 50% they want you to sign up and what you're signing is a fiduciary agreement which is you're allowing them to represent you against my office to give you an exemption that you're entitled to for free any one of these ladies and the guys that work in the customer service department will fill that out for you don't notarize any documents you have to notarize for free everything we do the state of texas mandates me to do it for free we don't charge you for anything there's very little things that you'll be charged for aside from additional copies but if it's on your property you're not going to pay for anything please don't pay anybody to file an exemption for me um i was going to talk about those bills but i think they already did it so i don't have to do that the benefits that are allowed under hb1102 are very similar to the type benefits that are allowed to the senior citizens exemption and it freezes the taxes as anita was mentioning whether we're talking about the anchor residency bill or whether we're talking about the actual over 65 that exists your value is not going to be increased because you painted your house and put a new roof or change the windows that's normal maintenance if you added a pool or you added another wing or you added a thousand square feet or you built a new garage that's different you don't lose your freeze they just add that value on top of it and whatever taxes are due on top of that it added to your freeze amount and that becomes your new freeze here's the interesting part if at any point in time the combination of your current tax bill your rate plus your value equals something less than your freeze amount you always pay the less of the two and that's in the law that's not a policy and so i'm going to close with that and i'll go ahead and take a few questions and then if you have any specific questions you want to talk about later we'll stick around for that too so um people are available after the meeting um this staff to help you with any specifics about your case please again to be respectful um of the people your neighbors here uh limit your question to one minute and we hope that you'll take any questions that are specifically about your case we have experts behind us that will help you after the meeting so are there any questions yes sir how many people are being sued right now because they're behind their taxes and what is the interest rate once you get high i'm not that guy the tax collector i don't collect any taxes but i do know that there's a very specific time range where taxes go to the point i want to say it's eight percent right off the bat and i think if it goes through july they add a percent a month until it hits a max of 20 percent that also is by state statute but that's a collection function we don't do any collections in my office we just value property and you know how many people are behind i don't know that's not something i do but i know it's it's it's not as bad as it was but there are a lot of people they're a list that get published uh three or four times a year but i don't recall it off the top of my head okay but that is you could make that in the form of a public information request of cardless guttiness at the bair county tax office one more thing yes sir you know there's a little problem of dropping people's homestead exemptions y'all send the letter out and the letter of comeback y'all drop the homestead exemptions i think that's very fair okay very very fair i'm glad you brought that up anything else you want to stop doing that uh no no that's terrible well i just want to explain whoever needs to learn that needs to be fired okay who is that that would be my word about it who my father you're born you're born i'm the boss isn't it let me just say that the law requires us to do diligence and if we send out a re-application letter and we don't get one back the law says then that property is to be removed we don't just drop it let me ask you the person that got a homestead exemption how can that go away because oftentimes people move people get married people leave property to their kids those kids are not eligible the same exemptions as the previous helpers would you guys know all about that i beg your pardon y'all know all about that we have more questions yes i just want to address the group on that i i went to help a friend with the taxes and then i wish yes i do and and her son was there who's a lawyer she says my mother gets one every year no but i wanted to address him was i applied for the appraisal review for it and when i went i was interviewed and they told me the person is i'm gonna i'm gonna walk you through some questions that they're gonna ask you and you know what he told me we have a lot of crazy people coming in here and i said that's not a good thing and that's why i was not selected because i reported that person okay i asked when that happened uh i think you know because it was addressed to you doesn't ring a bell so it was and and i can tell you exactly who i spoke to okay and the person is still in wait because i addressed it and it was not good yes i'm wondering how often does the homestead how often does the homestead existence have to be renewed once you apply to your homestead we generally do not remove those we have 400,000 homes right now we've only sent out about 10,000 re-application letters out of 400,000 so once you have it unless we haven't worked from you in 10 or 15 years we're not going to send you a re-application and what do you what would what would um what would signify whether or not you've heard or not like what would what do you file an appeal whether we've had any change in the status of your exemption if there's been added exemptions to your homestead exemption that contact makes it very obvious that you're still there we don't have any way of verifying that and so i know that we are currently working with a firm here in town to try to find a way to identify folks that look like they're eligible we share information with various cities water garbage collection if we can match up enough things that point to the same address for that person we want to send them an application so they can get that you know going there a lot of people that just won't apply because they either don't have a state issued driver's license or a state issued um id and that's one of the requirements of the law and my other question was do another question was does the school district that you resided does that dictate what their property value you know property taxes it can it can have an impact on it i mean everybody knows that if you go west of 281 and you're in Alamo Heights that's one thing if you go north and you're in northeast that's a different thing if you go south of Alamo Heights and you're in SAISD that's a different thing they all may have their own share of high values but people tend to want to be in a certain school district even within a particular school but a school zone within a school district so you know uh i know Hugh Neurolementary in northeast is very popular it's right in front of Churchill estates if that is a highly desirable area that doesn't have a whole lot of single family around it it does but there's also a lot of apartments there's a lot of people moving to that jurisdiction just for that reason so yeah i can so i noticed when i was looking at the tax information SAISD our tax rates really high compared to the lotus and i was like why is that schools are stuck over there and then schools are great over here if you can say that you know but i'm wondering if that's the case why is it so much higher in SAISD you know i'm trying to understand it better right and you know there's a couple of things that come into play with school districts and their tax rates and a lot of it doesn't have anything to do with the school district it has everything to do with the funding formulas school districts are required to tax at their maximum tax rate in order to maximize the amount of stay day they may be eligible for on the backside uh edgewood southwest south side south sand san Antonio uh those are all chapter 41 school districts 41 rich 42 41 they're actually 42 school districts so they would be eligible to receive money northeast i think north side alamo heights those are chapter 41 school districts they actually pay money that they've collected locally back into the recapture that's the whole robin the plan to hear about this man this is okay i think this lady was but i'll get i'll get to you i just wanted to know the information that you gave us previously is that somewhere we can pull up online or you have actually these are just reports i can't give you the data behind it until you actually file your appeal and then i can give you all the information you want uh we're not allowed to post any ad information on the internet we do have more up here though and it's just general san Antonio msa information no specific property yes sir i'd like to ask you uh what are some of the things that will decrease your property value okay that's a really good question if you have a neighbor that doesn't keep up their property and you have to look at pictures are worth a thousand words if you have structural issues that we have not taken into consideration you have doors that won't close windows that won't open pictures are really helpful if they're date stamped it's even better if you have estimates for repairs that'll help us establish how much dollar value to assign to that discount and if you do have a foundation issue even if you haven't repaired we're never going to remove the entire discount because you're going to have to disclose if you ever sell that property your agent will tell you you're going to have to disclose that the property had structural issues and you had it repaired so we don't ever take the whole discount on fine the first one deals with the process you mentioned of notification for the removal of exemptions what is the procedure how much uh outreach do you do notification do you do i said that's a great question this is one of about a hundred meetings i'll do before the end of april but we also put all of our information on facebook on twitter we do the required publications in the newspaper and if there is someone that you know who had their exemption removed if it was dropped we can still go back even if it was dropped two years ago back on if we removed it an error we can put it back on yes ma'am he's asking for the process the steps we take oh i'll be able to do in terms of getting before we remove boy that may be a thorough question i don't do everything in the office yeah like micah said um when when you've had absolutely no correspondence with anyone for 20 years we do actually send out batches each year just to kind of check on you know if someone's still there we want to make sure also that that everyone knows that there are more exemptions available than there were when they first applied so we want to make sure that they're getting the ones that they qualify for so we do actually when we send those out there are letters and re-applications we send those out at least two times and yes if we don't hear back we don't hear back anything at all from them we actually will check it in our system see if we can find any information and yes those do sometimes come off not for those ones right but as far as if there are over 65 exemptions we do actually send another two more mailings one is a 60-day mailing that is certified and the next one is a another 30 days deadline so another 90 days that we you know for over 65 accounts and so yeah so there's steps and we do you know retire vests to to get that information out there but we also you know want to make sure that the records are correct and that you know if someone moves out a lot of times people don't know to come and tell us you know hey I moved out and take my exemptions off and so we we have to you know make sure that everything is correct follow up what you mentioned uh affirmed that you are for dialoguing with to I think assist in identifying individual property owners that all have exemptions are you at liberty to disclose the name of that absolutely there are actually two firms what's the other one one of them is lexus nexus the other one is the line barber law firm they have a different agency that does we were actually talking about doing homestead audits and one of the reasons we do these audits is because let's say that um I'm over 65 and my taxes should have been $5,000 a year but I was only paying a thousand because if they were frozen so longer ago and my kids inherit my property and I never had that exemption removed well now they're looking at the difference that I should pay versus what I should have paid for five years back plus interest if I don't pay it and that's by statute so I could be saving my kids a $20,000 tax bill just because they inherited my property I have a question so if somebody moves they get they're living with somebody they move out of their residence are they still allowed to take that exemption there's a couple of ways especially the elderly if you're elderly and you move out of your home for up to two years you can still claim your homestead exemption if you're you know before my mom passed she actually went through some surgery and then she spent almost six weeks in a hospital and then she had six months in a rehabilitative hospital that whole time didn't cause her to lose her exemption because she would have still been qualified because the state permits up to a two-year letter of intent to return and so that is helpful we can do that what we find most often is I'm a young person the lady I married is a young person she owns her home I own my home now we're married the law only requires me or her or both of us together one residence homestead and those are the ones that we typically see falling off if it happens and there's no proof that that they can actually make it work what these guys do both of them a lot of offices use them these batch processes that Sarah sends out 10 15 000 at a time every other year whatever they actually scrub the whole file and they try to find everybody it's disqualifiable because we find if they have a mailing address here they have an electric utility over here and yet they're claiming this as their homestead but it looks like everything's pointing to another property that's kind of a simplified way of how that system works they use that to scrub data to pull property off the road that's their main business fund when I heard their pitch I asked them is it possible to switch that around to help me identify homeowners that look like they're getting their garbage picked up here their water bill is here their driver's license is here can I send them a homestead exemption I don't have any way of identifying all those things that I don't have all of that if it does come to pass it'll come out of my budget yes ma'am she's been waiting a really long time but I'll come back to you pass away I had a friend her dad passed away about 15 years ago and then she tells me oh my god no I have to pay all the back taxes because she never reported and she you know the housing will defer but she was still paying the taxes that her dad was paying she didn't realize you know about the tax you know so do you all ever receive that information so that automatically you can address it there's not really a good way to answer that I mean the fact of the matter is when she gets an appraisal notice it has all those exemptions on there when she gets a tax bill it has all those exemptions on there so the law requires that the taxpayer take responsibility if her parents that she inherited the property from didn't deal with it then her as the new owner should have dealt with it unfortunately I know that the tax office does payment plans I don't know much about that beyond that I don't do any collections but one thing I will tell you I don't really like talking about these things because I don't think they're really good but on the other hand if you're trying to decide whether you're going to pay your taxes or whether you're going to buy your medicine or whether you're going to buy food if you're over 65 you have a tax deferral affidavit that you can fill out that simply freezes your taxes I mean you stop so you don't pay any more taxes and there's no more tax paid until you sell the property or until your estate settles the property however long that takes so that may be another option I don't know how old that person is or if that would help or not so we only have five more minutes for question and answer but mr. Amitita will be here afterwards as well as his staff to answer any any specific questions so maybe one more question yes sir uh yes you might have touched on this question already but uh see how you said it decreasing your own property value to save your neighbors and keep up this property or whatever what if there's a registered sexual fender within certain quarter of a mile I mean that decrease here I have really pretty grandkids so I've monitored that very closely myself you know to be honest with you if there are enough of them in a certain area I don't know if the sex offender that means a whole lot of different things you don't know what they were convicted of but I will tell you this if there are enough of them in an area that the market recognizes that they're not willing to pay to be near that then yes it will cause but we don't make those judgments we look to the market to see what's happening if homes were selling for 80 000 and now we have 10 sex offenders at a 20 block radius and now they're selling for 50 000 that's an identifiable difference and we have to take that into consideration the number one thing and the reason I talk to you about your individual properties we have to do mass appraisal we look at a lot we're appraising almost 600 000 houses at a time every year so we're going to miss something we still are required by law to look at the individual characteristics of every one of your properties and that's why you know if you want to do it online and do an appeal that's fine I think you lose the ability to interact with another person you know I'll be real honest with you the market has been so tight for so long in San Antonio that's why you're saying the price is creepy but a normal market is considered to be six and a half months of supply we haven't had a three-month supply since 2011 that's a long time and so markets that were previously not desirable become more desirable I saw it about three years before my mom passed she got really ill and she was at St. Francis and I entertained the notion of buying this little house on the corner at Craig and I think Ripley right across from St. Francis and I thought you know surely I could buy that for 100 000 it was listed for 162 it sold for 170 and it hadn't been remodeled that's when I first saw it and that was about six or seven years ago and you go out by that house today just before you get to the railroad tracks there are sugarcane about 20 feet tall you can't even see the housing so I'm sure that if that was if I was living next to that house I'd take a picture and say I hate this house I hate this house that counts do we have time for this one more this is it thank you yes sir my name is Henry Rodriguez that executive director for New Lake on Cedars de San Francisco we appreciate what you're doing here today and the group that put together it's Camisa Texas 101 here and my my comment is this that we want to learn as much as we possibly can because there's a lot of suffering going on regardless you do the job yes but there's a lot of suffering going on so it's all of us to go after the subject have to go after the process and do whatever we can because we've got to stop the bleeding somehow thank you we just acquired a couple of videos only prescribed for Bear County be it English and in Spanish to explain the process to anybody who wants to view it they're online at WWE it's not there yet it's coming I thought about another week or so maybe two you know how the government works but um should be before you get your appraisal notice anyway and it just kind of gives you a real about a four minute video it's in English it's in Spanish it's the exact same information just in two different languages also on there you'll find Jennifer's Twitter and her Facebook every time we're speaking somewhere just because we're in a different part of town or a different neighborhood it's not yours if you have questions and you didn't get answered and you want to come there too by all means come on down sometimes it's a big group sometimes it's 200 sometimes it's 12 of us you know it doesn't matter we want to get that out there and give everybody their opportunity to go through the process I will tell you this last thing I've already instructed my staff because I think commercial property is getting a much bigger break as a matter of law and so what I've instructed my staff is we have a margin of error that we have to work with according to state tax policy and so officially bear county appraisal district has adopted the tie goes to the taxpayer if it's close you're going to get your number our website is www.bcad.org it's on the brochure there are brochures here up front as well I also wanted to mention that right now they are videotaping it and I think you all got this little card it's now cast so you can you're able to look it up online and you can view it on YouTube correct Jolie yeah okay so just remember you can view it and there's also we just updated it a link to all the places you can go to get your taxes done for free just type in your address and it tells you all the hours on the location and there's a lot of different services some people will fill it out for you and other places they just give you free access to a computer where you can do it all online so that was updated yesterday so that's all on the day thank you if you want your sign I mean okay now we're going to bring up the next presenter and this is also good information as well so please stay tuned Cynthia Spillman is also going to facilitate to make sure we stay on track and questions after the presentation Richard Kosta I'm so sorry hello everyone my name is Richard Kosta president of Misada des Mikasa my city is my home and we help you protest your property taxes for free we're a 501c3 and at no cost to you we will help you protest your property taxes for free I we're a group of volunteer licensed real estate agents and we and I train real estate agents how to protest their property taxes how to help you go through the entire process we'll help you with the evaluation of your home we'll get you free contractors estimates for your home and help you with the entire package and the other services that our nonprofit does that we have low income renters find homes and then by the end this year we're going to be building brand new homes for displaced homeowners these homeowners are being displaced because their taxes are too high or their home is in disrepair so we're going to build them a brand new home sell their old home to pay out the home that we just built them so they can continue to be homeowners but anyway getting back to protesting property taxes so in April when you get that notice saying that your property taxes evaluation is this much what you can give us a call and then we'll go in and we'll do a valuation and see whether or not we believe that is a fair market value and if we don't believe so we'll do an assessment we'll get you all the evidence that you need we'll get you the contractor estimates that you need and then we'll walk you through the entire process we'll go to the informal with you we'll go to the formal with you at no absolutely no cost to you again with the 501c3 non-profit no cost and that is our I think we have flyers at the front if you raise your hand we'll bring the flyers to you a couple of things that I want to add in there we also double check to make sure you have all your exemptions so we'll make sure that you have your home set exemption check it and make sure they have your senior exemption all that now we also ask that seniors still think about and have us come over and help them assess whether or not they should protest their property taxes even though that your property taxes is frozen not every taxing entity is frozen the river authorities portion is not frozen and the university health system is not frozen that's just a little bit they're not a they're not a huge portion of your taxes but if you're on a fixed income every little bit every year that goes up it takes away from your grocery bill takes away from your medicine bill and so we'll go through and we'll help you assess and see if we can free that valuation a little lower which brings down how much you're paying the taxes or that little bit of increase that from those other taxing entities also I like that he brought up that that you can defer paying property taxes if you're over the age of 65 again what he said is true it doesn't go away it accumulates with an eight percent interest as well and so those property taxes it still accumulates but it's a good it's a good answer for somebody that you know that that taxes that portion that you're that's frozen that your pain is affecting you from paying your grocery bills paying for your medicine and everything and so there's different ways that you can go about that we can go ahead and have them talk to you about that kind of stuff I train my real estate agents on that information as well this is not a brokerage we ask real estate agents from different companies to come and volunteer and I train them all for free right and so if you know any real estate agents that and are interested in this kind of stuff please send them over I'll talk to them I'll train them for free and have them get part of the team and then if you don't know any other groups homeowners and everything please let them know it is a free program I'll help you protest your property taxes for free um all right that's really quick do you have any questions my name is rich and costa or Richard a costa and uh and uh uh it's uh my city is my home miss you that is Mikasa sorry ma'am I have a question yes so if you would like um if you take any kind of gatherings for senior citizens and not senior citizens they're the ones that need most of the help I'm not saying nobody else so so let me get there so bcat I always say bcat is not the enemy they don't have the ability like real estate agents do to go inside your homes right we can go inside your homes and see all the different stuff in there if you got an entire neighborhood right and there's 20 homes on that block and six of them has been flipped bcat does not know that your home hasn't been flipped they just see the value of the area that has been uh uh the the flipping has happened they sold for more and they don't know that your home hasn't been flipped or anything so we'll go through and we'll go and visit your home we'll pull up the analysis because we have access to information that they don't have access to and we can see what the differences are and then and really point in on to that so when we do so when a real estate agent does a cma at comparative market analysis when we're selling your home it's the same kind of analysis that we're going to do when we're trying to help you protest your property taxes now when you get that notice and you need our help one of the things that our real estate agents are going to ask you to do is get that evidence packet because what's different from a cma that somebody a real estate agent does to sell your home is that what our real estate agents will do is do an assessment on all the homes that are on that evidence packet so there's 20 homes on that evidence packet we're going to do a comparable analysis to every single one of those homes to to make sure that we're getting you down to the fair market value of that home phone number yes my phone number is 210 802 99 82 our website where you can also log in go on to and put your information as for our help is my city is my home dot com that's the same thing as our email address is my city is my home at gene mail dot com and uh unfortunately the informal decision go well because i wasn't prepared and so they're not going to have two pictures and do everything else supposed to do so when i got there they really gave it to me because they said there's one home in this area that was so for 120 000 so therefore your house went up 20 000 okay so then they gave me a listing of all the homes in that area right and then i said but wait a minute my neighbor's home did was not increase and this other home was not increased because they tried to say everyone's taxing went up across the board but that really that didn't happen only to selective homes so that's my problem is that not everybody homes in the area gets uh uh an increase when you have a new home speed so you know at that you know at very high prices so i that that's my concern and i i don't know what address of it i'm glad that this agency is now out there because you know it's like you know and then i i have an offender very near my home and when i brought that up they said that i that had nothing to do with it as far as we know uh we are the only non-profit organization that provides this free resource throughout San Antonio i could be wrong could i know there's churches out there and other groups that may do so but i feel like as far as i've been heard i heard and i've been going doing presentations we're the only non-profit in san antonio that will help you protest your property taxes for free in the entire process so um and that and that is why we started i'm a i'm a a veteran i i did uh i was an air force for 11 years i got out in 2017 me and my wife moved here to san antonio she's sitting in the back she goes to utsa for architecture and we started a few businesses together and we weren't there was no reason for us to start our non-profit that wasn't why we came to san antonio we just kind of like ran into this by going to city trying to learn about the city of san antonio and then we just ran into these issues that were going on and and uh maria benioz about uh she challenged us to start a non-profit because i complained about why the city hasn't done this uh have a process like this that helps residents protest their property taxes throughout like a person to person level yes the vcat are great there they you go there they give you all the information i use their customer service lines still i call them up they they're really friendly they'll answer all my questions but they don't have the staffers to go to every single person's home to help them out personally throughout the process well i do i got tons of volunteers ready to come by consider a percentage of a person's income because like with my grand and with my parents their taxes were frozen years ago so uh it's if they had to pay the full tax right now it'd be about three social security for two social security well that that that's what i will tell you if he's over the age 65 he can defer paying property tax oh okay if you talk to the tax collector's office but they they will know but they will work with you to to but the city passed on it was saying that it's a pass on it's a kitty one it's going to be like 50 of my state if i take over the new um so so what well so what i what i when it goes to helping seniors what one of the other reasons why ask seniors to protest their property taxes and i and i hope i answer your question into this is uh not just because of the little bit of it increases uh throughout the years yeah exactly and exactly exactly and so so what i'm saying is that's a sec that's another reason why seniors should protest their valuations because if they don't protest their valuations this entire time right because and they didn't really care about that extra increase or didn't notice it enough to say anything their valuation could be going up a little by little by little and protesting that valuation even though it's frozen we'll keep it at a fair market value and so that way when you do inherit the property you're not being taxed at a value that's not fair well we have seven thousand our home for us to be now they're going up to about 20 now they're and now we have home to so for a hundred and fifty thousand five thousand small lots and so i would i would like to speak to you afterwards so this is more of a specific question if i could talk to you afterwards i'll go down to the details with you well it's hurting a lot of people out i think i need to talk to you just to understand it better than yeah any other questions please first of all thank you for the love here it's a service that you gave me i have a problem Richard do you have constituents that have trouble with your homes money is high and they can't and they've been waiting okay so what i'm advocating now is the social justice to say and stop the developers from coming to their homes and not you because they've you know what is the foundation of what any destruction or whether the neighborhood has a good nutrition guard and their houses can value so this i am proposing and i hope that you will be um to have some sort because even for my senior citizens as you said they would be going to make a protest and they have no knowledge of what that means so having a meeting and bringing in constituents from different bodies i'm very curious and knowing that you state facts that you want to help them they have no problem with all that state legislator or council member yes that's great i would love that's why that's why i really really need your help to like spread the word because i can only be in so many places at once it's like everyone else over here you know spread the word we want to come out and help i'll speak at any event uh invited to one thing that we also do too when when we go and help people when we help low-income renters find homes when we help homeowners protest their property taxes we ask them if they would like to do a needs assessment and that needs assessment we ask them do they need help with employment do they need help with transportation do they need help with medical services because we have me and my wife we have other businesses and so we have these nonprofit programs but we're not trying to become a silo and create more and more and more things right well we try to do is create create a partnership with different organizations and so that way when they do that needs assessment they need employment help we connect them to a representative in goodwill you know because they have employment help we we connect them with a medical uh Medicare service provider that can help them through that process and so that way we help them a little bit more beyond just protesting property taxes uh so so uh she was saying so part of our our thing like when we help people uh low-income renters find homes we'll help any renters find homes so basic so one example is if your rent's too high as your landlord increases your the amount of your rent and everything uh what we can do is you can give us a call and we'll find you a real estate agent that will help you find a home why are real estate agents are our volunteers in this respect because your thing is like well doesn't any real estate agent help you find a home well a lot of times if it's a low income and a low rent landlords won't pay a real estate agent a referral fee so they won't help you out not because they're an evil real estate agent because they got a family to feed too and it takes time to help you find a home well our real estate agents that are volunteering will help you whether or not we get a referral fee whether or not we get paid we don't care we're gonna help you find a place so if you know anybody that's in that situation where their rent is too high and they don't know where to go to we will help them find a home information for all of you uh they will be staying here uh to answer any more questions or look up your address to see if you do have a homestead or or something like that anyways i want to thank everybody for coming out and hearing this hearing this presentation thank you