GARDENS PARTY

Here we go with editorial, kitchen sink-style. 

From the inyo County Supervisors meeting on Tuesday – the most quixotic tax assessment appeal I’ve ever heard. 

A group out of Beverly Hills which calls itself Denver Gardens has owned the old Kmart property behind Taco Bell since 1998. 

The property is currently assessed at $5.85 million. 

This is based upon the 1998 sales price and annual Prop. 13 adjustments. 

Denver Gardens insists the property is worth … well, it depends upon which paperwork you’ve seen last. In the agenda packet, they first claim the property is worth $3.5 million in 2021. Then $3 million circa $2022. Then $4 million (according to documents fielded by Supervisors at Tuesday’s meeting – when Supervisors convened as the Inyo County Board of Equalization). 

Denver Gardens was represented by a firm called “Assessment Appeal Advisors” out of Calabasas. It made you wonder whether Denver Gardens found AAA’s number on the back of park bench. 

A young buck named Ryan Kircher represented Assessment Appeal Advisors at the hearing. He drove up to Bishop in a Porsche Cayenne with Arizona plates. He appeared to be at least 23-years old. His Linkedin profile states that he graduated from Cal Lutheran University in 2023. His profile says he’s been with the firm since September, 2022 – so maybe he was still going to school when he started the job. 

He gets points for energy and enthusiasm. 

But the argument for a lowering of the valuation of the 4.5-acre property was just … weird. 

He acknowledged that Kmart still had a lease on the 57,000-square foot property (which expires next year). He also said Kmart is still paying $0.50/foot on the lease. 

There was a humorous (at least to me) interlude where various staffers were trying to calculate what Kmart was paying per month. (57,000 times 0.5 would be $28,500/month). That would equate to $342,000/year. 

Or a 5.8% return on a property assessed at $5.85 million. 

Kircher suggested that the pandemic had negatively affected the property valuation. This was his lead salvo. Only one problem with that: California’s Revenue and Taxation Code section 170 states disaster relief provisions require physical damage – they don’t apply to solely economic damage. 

Now Denver Gardens might argue its building suffers physical damage, but that’s what neglect produces. 

What’s really happening is that the lease for Denver Gardens Sugar Mama (Kmart) is set to expire, so now the property owner’s gotta, you know, hustle. As Inyo County Assessor Dave Stottlemyre summarized, “You can’t just sit there and let a building go bad … poor management is not an excuse to bring down the value of property.”

Inyo Supervisors unanimously rejected the appeal

A few odds and ends to fill in regarding various stories this week.

The photo on the front page depicting the 80’ stealth monopine … Koetz says neighbors vehemently objected to the convenient uphill view from Old Mammoth Road – basically, the Town cherrypicked the view which would seem least obtrusive. 

Milender on the Tenant Rights presentation: As many of the attendees were landlords as tenants – certainly the landlord contingent had more questions. 

And from last week, Dale Knott was quite upset at the characterization that he “misrepresented” an email from Mammoth Councilmember Amanda Rice. 

So like those Progressive commercials where they throw the red challenge flag to dispute recollections of a particular event, we reviewed the evidence and will downgrade Mr. Knott’s penalty from a 15-yard personal foul to a 5-yard offside call. 

Mr. Knott had sent Councilmember Rice an impassioned email urging her to not vote for a moratorium on the issuance of permits for nightly rentals. 

Ms. Rice thanked Mr. Knott for his input, and invited him to apply for the committee Council was establishing to study the subject. 

Mr. Knott, it would appear, did not read the email carefully, and misunderstood the invitation to apply for the commitee as an invitation to join. And quickly accepted. 

This apparently peeved Ms. Rice, who used the misunderstanding as an argument to downgrade Knott and bolster Kelly Gardner for the final slot. 

The commitee’s first meeting is scheduled for Monday, November 13 at 5 p.m. in Suite Z, Minaret Mall. 

I called Town Finance Director Rob Patterson to ask him what it cost for an STR permit. He said there’s a $65 application fee and a $25 permit fee. Cost of enforcement is not included/paid for by these fees. 

Inyo County Supervisors, the City of Bishop and the Bishop Paiute Tribe have made it official. Sierra Lifeflight was awarded the EMS contract for greater Bishop, and it will include governmental subsidy. Lesson learned: Bullying a competitor out of business is good for business. Is there a chapter on that in Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War?” 

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war.”