San Diego Treasurer: Property Taxes Will Mitigate Housing Slide

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published October 2, 2007 at 1:39 PM PDT

This story was published more than 17 years ago.

San Diego County Treasurer/Tax Collector Dan McAllister says property taxes will set a record this year in spite of a slow-down in the number of new homes added to the rolls. KPBS reporter Alison St J

San Diego County Treasurer/Tax Collector Dan McAllister says property taxes will set a record this year in spite of a slow-down in the number of new homes added to the rolls. KPBS reporter Alison St John has more.

McAllister says only about 14,000 new residential property parcels were added to the tax rolls last year -- significantly smaller growth than in previous years. But he says growth in the commercial sector is staggering.

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McAllister : We have had some significant transitions on the commercial side actually of our real estate portfolio in San Diego that I think is going to offset any downslide that we might have seen in the residential side.

For example, McAllister says the Irvine company just bought 21 sites in UTC for over a billion dollars -- doubling the assessed value.

San Diego County's total property tax value will top $4.3 billion, up from $3.9 billion last year. Almost half the money goes to local schools. The county gets to keep about 12 percent.

Alison St John, KPBS News.

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.