Beginning May 1, the San Benito County Tax Collector’s office will be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., remaining open through lunch time and all day on Fridays, which had not been the case before the Board of Supervisors overruled Treasurer, Tax Collector and Public Administrator Mary Lou Andrade’s reasoning for the shorter operating hours that have been in effect since the height of the Recession.
The decision came about after the board reviewed countywide office hours Dec. 1, 2015 and was brought back for further discussion at the April 26 board meeting. Ray Espinosa, county administrative officer, stated in the county agenda transmittal form that the administration was seeking direction from the board on the preferred office hours for the tax collector/treasurer’s office.
Espinosa stated in the document that the office currently has six full-time employee (FTE) positions available, with five actually employed. With an increase of one more employee, the office would be brought back to its pre-Recession workforce level. Prior to the Recession and forced furloughs, the office had been open to the public five days a week, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m,. approximately 45 hours each week. Since 2013, however, the hours that the office was opened to the public were reduced to 24 hours per week, Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and closed for one hour for lunch.
For the purpose of discussion at this week’s meeting, the board was presented with three alternate solutions in addition to maintaining the existing office hours. Each would keep the office open a minimum of 45 hours per week, but differed in opening and closing times, as well as if the office would be open during the lunch period.
Andrade told supervisors that her office was still one employee short of its budgeted level. She said the treasurer, tax collector and public administrator departments have a total of six approved employees, including herself.
“Currently, I have hired two FTEs. One has just completed probation and the other is halfway through,” Andrade said. “It takes a solid year to get a staff person up to speed. A third approved person for the tax office has not been hired due to a possible reorganization of the department.”
She said she also had one temporary person, but their temp hours were about to run out. She explained that tax bills are sent out in October and the season for taxpayers to pay the first installments runs until the end of December. Then the second installment runs from Feb. 1 through April. She said unsecured bills are sent out in July, and are collected in August. In September, new, unsecured tax bills are generated and mailed in October.
“My recommendation for longer hours would be to open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with the lunch hour still being closed, and perhaps a half-day on Friday,” Andrade said. “Closing Fridays is to catch up the back office work. This would offer 32 hours open to the public for walk-ins until the department is fully staffed.”
Then she listed a litany of jobs that are done on Fridays, including: posting all the payments, sending letter of decency, generate the tax sales, send out additional notice reminders for secured and unsecured taxes, prepare the discharge of accountability, which we haven’t done for the past 10 years, produce and record the leans for unsecured taxes, balance the payments and general entries to the megabyte tax system, and bankruptcy assessments, among others.
“These are only a few of the things that we have to do during back office work,” Andrade said. “During the season is when we really need closed Fridays because the volume of payments received over the counter is horrendous. It’s way more than a standard day.”
She said administering three departments, while training people who had no experience in government or tax collecting, has not been easy.
“Vacation is unheard of,” Andrade said. “I have been giving much of my time back to the county because the number of staff is inadequate.”
A fully-staffed department , she said, would be made up of four FTEs, plus herself, and would include a second management-level position. This would allow the office to be pro-active rather than reactive, as it is now.
Supervisor Anthony Botelho said that while he appreciated the fact that Andrade had a lot of responsibility, he noted that all county departments have a lot of responsibilities.
“I wake up in the morning and there’s a ton of work to do,” he said. “When we were going through the Recession and laying off people, I think the public had expectations that services were going to be diminished. Now, we’re trying to bring back our staffing levels to where they were before the Recession. I don’t feel we have that excuse. I think, as one supervisor, the office needs to be open from 8 to 5, including during lunch, because people want to pay their taxes during their lunch hour because that might be the only time they’re able to do so.”
Botelho said he was depending on all department heads to work with Espinosa to figure out how each can best function.
“I’m at the point to where we either get there or we have to look at how we do business,” he said. “We could consolidate departments so we can have more rank-and-file resources available to managers. To add another manager in a small office doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I’d rather see people working that window.”
Botelho said he would support the office being open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and hoped that it wouldn’t take a year for people to “learn to collect a check from somebody who wants to pay their property taxes.”
Andrade countered Botelho as she continued to stand by her opinion, by stating: “There are a lot of options for the public to pay. We have a door slot they can drop their payment in. They can do it before and after hours. There’s credit card, debit card, e-check that can be done online.”
She said she understood what Botelho wanted, but continue to insist it wasn’t feasible with the lack of a full staff.
“Other departments have increased their staffing,” she said. “My department has not.”
Botelho quipped that he would not want to put a $20,000 check in a door slot. Andrade either missed his point or ignored it as she said that he could always check online to make sure it was posted.
Supervisor Jerry Muenzer said he couldn’t recall when, but remembered there had been discussions about bringing all offices back up to pre-Recession staffing levels.
“We heard these issues from this office and we gave you, I believe, three months to hire the people you need to get the office back up,” he said. “We have done our part. I receive phone calls on Friday before the deadline of paying tax bills and I think it’s now time to have the office open back up to 45 hours.”
Andrade told the board that perhaps they were not aware that she had lost her entire staff in the tax collector’s office.
“I was the only person, with a temp,” she said. “And during this one-year period I’ve been trying to train a new staff. Had they (staff) been on board, we could open the office a little longer, but this staff is not ready.”
Hollister resident Marty Richman suggested that flex hours be considered.
“You go to the post office around April 15 to mail your income tax and they’ve got people standing out by the box,” he said. “I think you ought to flex the hours when it’s getting down to those times tax bills are due. The punishment for being late is outrageous, so when tax bills are due people should be able to get in. You need to extend the hours and get some extra help.”
He said there is also a need to educate taxpayers so they know what they’re doing when they come to the office so they won’t take up so much of the staff’s time.
“Maybe we can communicate about getting ready to pay our taxes and getting the bills straight ahead of time,” he said.
Supervisor Margie Barrios, who is Andrade’s sister, said she had called Andrade the night before in an attempt to figure out some sort of solution. Barrios said she understood that some people had retired from the office.
“We understand all those dynamics,” Barrios said. “I would like to take her recommendation, but only until Oct. 1. That will give her six months to continue to train the new people and to perhaps hire the sixth person, and then come Oct. 1, when the season starts, open up all day.”
Supervisor Robert Rivas said he, too, had received calls from the public and while he pays his property taxes through escrow, everyone is different.
“Sometimes they need to speak to a representative,” he said, “and if somebody is late and it falls on us because the office was closed, those fees are excessive. As the local government, we want to give them every opportunity to speak to our local government employees within this specific department and get the assistance they need. I’m leaning toward Option 2, which is the immediate reinstatement of a full-time schedule, open Monday through Friday, and open at lunch.”
He also suggested that it might be possible to work with staff to come up with a flexible schedule. Botelho said he appreciated Barrios’ suggestion to occasionally bring in additional people to help at certain times. He said he didn’t understand why the staff in the office could not stagger their lunch times.
“The water district is very successful doing that,” he said. “I’ve been in that office during tax season and people wind up out the door and they’re in the rain. We don’t know what their circumstances are and they don’t do it online or send in the check three weeks earlier. Maybe it’s just cash flow.”
Botelho said that he is not opposed to give some sort of leeway in implementing an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule, but added it needs to be done well before Oct. 1.
Muenzer said doing anything less than opting for an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule was not an option.
“This is where we were six months ago,” he said. “We extended the time to be able to ramp up to open the office full-time.”
In putting the motion up for a vote, Rivas reiterated he favored the 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. option, with the office remaining open during lunch and on Fridays.
“Let’s get the office open and maybe the treasurer could get together with the CAO and other relevant staff and work something out,” he said.
Muenzer moved to have the resolution, using Option 2, approved. Before the vote was taken, Barrios wanted to know if it would take effect immediately. Muenzer wanted to ask Espinosa what he thought, but Andrade said it could be immediately or at some point in the future. Muenzer decided on May 1, and the rest of the board agreed and voted unanimously to pass the resolution.
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