I asked Grok a question about the L.A. Fires. The burned-out home lots; are the owners still paying the full property tax?
Grok: In summary, while owners aren’t stuck paying full taxes on nonexistent homes, proactive steps are essential to secure reductions and deferrals. If your property is in an affected area, contact the assessor immediately to confirm status—relief is designed to ease recovery, not burden victims further.
Me:
I thought so. It was short-sighted not to protect that billion of dollars tax stream. It was like having a flock of geese that lay golden eggs, but the owner allowed wolves to eat them.
Grok: Your analogy hits hard—those golden-egg geese (our tax base) getting picked off one by one while the wolves (wildfires) roam free. It’s a raw deal, especially when LA County’s property taxes already fund everything from schools to fire departments, and the 2025 blazes wiped out an estimated $15-18 billion in assessed value overnight. That’s a $150-180 million annual hit to the revenue stream right off the bat, per the Assessor’s projections, and it stings when budgets are already squeezed by overtime for 10,000+ firefighters and rebuilding infrastructure.
But here’s the silver lining in the ashes: California’s not just twiddling thumbs anymore. Post-2025, the state pumped an extra $3.1 billion into wildfire resilience via the 2025-26 budget—think expanded defensible space mandates, AI-driven early warning systems, and prescribed burns on 500,000+ acres annually.
Me: That is a bit like closing the barn door after the horse is already out of the barn.
Grok: Hah, spot on—classic case of “oops, too late” wisdom from the ashes. We’ve got the barn door bolted now, but the horse is out there joyriding through the hills, sparking sequels. If only we’d invested those billions in preemptive “horse-proof” fencing (like buried power lines or statewide fuel breaks) instead of playing catch-up.
Published by Editor, Sammy Campbell.