The following is a profile of one of the candidates for Santa Clara County Assessor. Longtime Assessor Larry Stone is retiring and four candidates have jumped into the race. Profiles of the other candidates are on the front page of padailypost.com.
BY DANIEL SCHRAGER
Daily Post Staff Writer
Saratoga City Councilwoman Yan Zhao first decided to challenge longtime Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone for his office after learning that the assessor’s office still used a decades-old computer system.
“A couple years ago I heard of (the) assessor’s office, the issues they have,” Zhao, 58, said in a phone call with the Daily Post. “Then I just start looking into it. And I learn, ‘Oh my gosh, the assessor’s office has been running on the same computer system for 40-plus years.”
But Stone retired in July and Zhao will now face his endorsed successor, Los Altos Vice Mayor Neysa Fligor – alongside Rishi Kumar and Bryan Do – on the ballot Nov. 4.
“A lot of people guessed or can see this special election is almost like someone trying to pass this office to an insider,” Zhao said.
Since Stone’s retirement, the office has announced a plan to implement a new system called PRISM and store data in the cloud. But Zhao, an engineer by trade, said her background means she can implement the updates “correctly and effectively.”
Zhao, who served as Saratoga’s mayor in 2021 and 2024, said her other priorities would be community engagement and shortening the appeals process for property appraisals. She points to her experience navigating the COVID-19 pandemic as mayor as an example of how she’ll engage with the community.
“I had to come up many creative ways to serve our community,” Zhao said. “We had to shift everything online, so I did mayor’s office hours at (the) farmer’s market – outdoors, people could still come and talk to me for issues, questions, concerns.”
Zhao also implemented online town hall-style lunch meetings and made the city’s newsletter weekly instead of monthly.
A Saratoga City Councilwoman since 2018, Zhao believes she can combine her experience in local government with her tech background.
One thing Zhao’s resume doesn’t include is time as a real estate appraiser. Since announcing her candidacy, Zhao has obtained an appraiser’s license and taken classes required of the incoming assessor. Fligor’s campaign has pointed out that none of the other candidates have experience in the assessor’s office or the certification required of the assessor.
But Zhao isn’t concerned about her lack of experience in the office, saying it needs a “new perspective, especially in terms of technology.”
The problem I have with the assessor’s office is that they wait to open their mail, which allows them to declare more people’s taxes as being late. Everyone who pays late gets hit with a 10% penalty. When this happened to me, I asked the Post Office how many days should it take for a letter to go from a Palo Alto drop-off box to San Jose. They say three days. But the assessor’s office will declare it late even if you’ve mailed it a week early. My guess is that they’re setting the checks that arrive a day or two before the deadline and pretending they’re late so they can rake in more late fees. I called the assessor to find out how many people get hit with late fees, but they wouldn’t say. They also wouldn’t say how much money they collected this way. I’m hoping a new assessor cleans this up.