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Board Of Equalization and Review

Orange County · Board of Equalization & Review
Thursday, April 30, 2026

Regular meeting Tax rate and revaluationAppointments and personnelEthics and transparency

Agenda document Minutes Watch Meeting recap

What was decided

  1. Approved IVConsent Agenda Consent agenda accepted

Read from the agenda's recorded outcomes. Where the board published minutes, those are the record — this is a pointer to them.

What's on this agenda

No appeals. The Board of Equalization and Review sets its hearing calendar for the year and spends the meeting on how it will conduct itself - eight questions of process, from what counts as good cause for a late appeal to whether a property owner can be represented by someone who is not a lawyer.

Summarized from the published agenda. Read the agenda itself before acting on it.

Meeting recap

What happened, drawn from the records published after the meeting. Minutes

This is the board writing its own rules before the season starts, and the list is a candid inventory of where it has had trouble.

Good cause for accepting an untimely appeal is the first item, and the reason is visible in the record: in June 2025 the board accepted eight late Present Use Value applications in a single afternoon, all from farmers who had not known the programme existed until a neighbour or a leasing farmer told them. Establishing guidelines turns eight sympathetic decisions into a standard.

The scheduling question - hour blocks against fifteen-minute appointments - comes from a board that repeatedly booked appeals at quarter-hour intervals and then found owners absent, cases running over, or fifteen slots booked and nine decided. Displaying evidence in the room and requiring evidence to be submitted by a date are the same problem from the other side.

The remaining four are about who may speak for whom: qualified representatives of property-owning entities, non-attorney consultants, calling witnesses, and representation by attorneys. A board that spent an hour in 2025 refusing standing to nine neighbours at a related hearing has reason to settle those in advance.

The board also directed staff to analyse two specific neighbourhoods and bring the result back for discussion - the closest thing in the record to the board examining systematic valuation rather than individual appeals, at the same time the county's own work group was hiring consultants to do the same thing.

How the votes went

Three motions, each 3-0 with none against: accepting the consent agenda, adopting nine hearing dates from 26 May to 30 June, and authorising staff to produce a neighbourhood analysis for the board.

From the published minutes.

Speaking at this meeting

Orange County's own rules for public comment — check them before you rely on anything here.

Agenda items (7)

Discussion item · 4Procedural · 3
  1. II Oath of Office
    Procedural Appointments and personnel
    Members took the oath of office for the 2026 appeal year and were sworn in and notarized.
  2. III Open the BOER to accept new appeals for 2026
    Procedural Tax rate and revaluation
    Nine sitting dates adopted: 26 and 27 May, 9, 10, 11, 23, 24 and 25 June, adjourning 30 June.
  3. IV Consent Agenda
    Discussion item Ethics and transparencyTax rate and revaluation
    Eight questions of procedure: guidelines for good cause in accepting untimely appeals; hour blocks against fifteen-minute appointments; displaying evidence in the board room; requiring evidence to be submitted by a date; qualified representatives of property-owning entities; use of non-attorney consultants; calling witnesses; and representation by attorneys.
    Consent agenda accepted
  4. V Approval of BOER meeting dates
    Discussion item Tax rate and revaluation
    Staff authorised to produce an analysis of two neighbourhoods and bring it back to the board.
  5. VI.a Guidelines for good cause on untimely appeals
    Procedural Tax rate and revaluation
    Whether to change current practice, under which nearly all untimely appeals are accepted, weighed against the need for equitable judgment. The staff attorney was asked to prepare a document setting out where good cause applies.
    Staff attorney to draft guidance for the May meeting
  6. VI.b Review of scheduling practice
    Discussion item Tax rate and revaluation
    Hour-long blocks against fifteen-minute appointments. Appraisers will keep the schedule full by booking appeals into the earliest available slot, and appellants will be told their hearing goes ahead as scheduled unless they ask the tax office to move it.
  7. VI.c Display of evidence in the board room
    Discussion item Tax rate and revaluation
    A project to mount an evidence display monitor and reconfigure the hearing room, still in approvals. Members discussed whether the county's evidence should go to appellants in advance and decided it will be shown during the hearing and provided afterward on request.

Agenda changes

What moved between published versions of this agenda. Item numbers shift constantly as things are inserted, so only genuine additions and removals are listed.

Other recent meetings of this board