For county assessors and recorders
Research and appraisal support for property tax assessment.
Mesa answers California property tax questions with every step cited, and prepares the workbooks, appeal exhibits, and document checklists your staff produce.
What assessors’ offices use Mesa for.
01
Answering change-in-ownership and exemption questions
Ask the question the way it reaches your desk, and Mesa returns a determination with each step cited to the code, BOE guidance, and case law.
- “Is a 25% transfer of LLC membership interests a change in ownership?”
- “Does the Prop 19 parent-child exclusion cover a family farm held in trust?”
- “Is a vendor lease at the county airport a taxable possessory interest?”
02
Reading a bill against current law
Mesa reads a pending bill or a new Letter to Assessors against current law and writes a cited memo on what changes for your office.
03
Reviewing appraisals and building valuation workbooks
Mesa reviews appraisals against the Property Tax Rules and the Assessor’s Handbook, and builds valuation workbooks for complex properties like hotels and vineyards.
04
Preparing for an assessment appeal
Mesa selects and adjusts comparable sales, maps them from county GIS, and drafts the written response the appeals board will read.
05
Researching legal descriptions and boundaries
Mesa reconciles BLM land records, Williamson Act contracts, and county GIS into one cited account of a parcel’s legal description, and flags where they disagree.
A township map zooms into Section 14, T12N R9E, Mount Diablo Meridian. BLM land records, Williamson Act enrollment, the mining claim index, and county GIS each add a layer for parcel 031-140-022. The legal description reads: The NE¼ of the SW¼ of Section 14, T12N, R9E, M.D.M., EXCEPTING the north 30 feet for road purposes. A conflict is flagged where the county GIS line runs 38 feet east of the 1887 patent call.
06
Examining deeds, maps, and filings
Mesa turns recording requirements and your own procedures into reusable checklists, then checks each deed or map against them and cites the rule behind every item.
Other work Mesa takes on.
Finding things in your own files
Search your procedures, prior determinations, and forms in Vaults or SharePoint.
Reports and dashboards
Build recurring reports, like a sales ratio study, from your own data.
Letters and everyday drafting
Draft taxpayer letters and staff reports from your office’s templates.
Case study · San Francisco
San Francisco’s Assessor-Recorder is clearing its restrictive covenant backlog.
AB 1466 requires California recorders to redact unlawful restrictive covenants from their records. Mesa scanned San Francisco’s 7.4 million pages and prepared each covenant document as a redaction packet. Reviewers average 59 packets an hour, and more than seven in ten need no correction.
7.4M
Pages processed
128K+
Staff hours saved
370x
Faster than manual
“This project would have taken years of manual work without Caldera.”
Joaquin Torres
Assessor-Recorder, City and County of San Francisco
This work runs in Mesa Research, and covenant redaction and records requests run in Mesa Public Records.
Bring a question from your office.
Tell us about a transfer you’re unsure of or an upcoming appeal, and we’ll work through it in Mesa with you.