This morning at my MLS (multiple listing service) meeting, John Tuteur, the Napa County Tax assessor, spoke to our group as he does about twice a year. He had some pretty amazing facts about the property tax assessments for Napa County. Here are a few of the highlights:

• California will have deflation for 2010 compared to 2009
• If your home was valued at $100,000 as of January 1, 2009 for property tax evaluations, it will be worth $99,764 January 1, 2010 for this valuation
• This is the first time in Napa County Tax Assessor’s recent history (since at least 1973) this has occurred
• Since Proposition 13 (property taxes can only increase by a max 2% in any tax year) was passed by the voters in 1978 only 5 years have had 1-2% increase, the remainder the max 2%
• 64% of the homes in American Canyon are in a decline of value status for property tax evalution compared to previous years
• This number is 26% in the City of Napa

Besides being a great speaker filled with great facts, John also maintains a number of great article on the Napa County web site which can be accessed here:

John Tuteur’s Property Tax Articles

* We will require a deficiency note on the loss-theres no option to just opt out.  We will review on individual basis and try to assist as much as needed to make it affordable.

Just finished reading a very interesting book about the City of Napa by Lauren Coodley with Paula Amen Schmitt titled “Napa The Transformation of an American Town“.

Couple of facts I discovered from reading it:

• “In 1924 Rudolph Boysen, a farmer and amateur horticulturalist, developed the boysenberry while living on Third Avenue, by combining pollen from a blackberry and “some other kind of berry.” When he left for Anaheim in 1925, he took six vines with him, which he planted in an orange grove. His new berry was 50 percent bigger and juicier than the blackberry, but no one was interested until 1932, when George Darrow, a scientist from the U. S. Department of Agriculture, went to Anaheim to find him. Darrow asked Walter Knott, a local berry expert, for help in the search. The two of them tracked down Boysen, who had become a city parks superintendent. He led them to the orange grove where the vines remained half dead, on the verge of extinction. They transplanted vines to Knott’s farm, and began selling berries at their farm stand in 1935. The size and popularity of what Knott dubbed “boysenberries” led to the sucess of Knott’s Berry Farm.”
• “A spectacular event occurred on F Street in 1915. Napa Register reporter Phyllis King described it as “the sounds of music and voices heard throughout the city seeming to come from the heavens. Many thought the world was coming to an end and scrambled for cover.” The sounds were produced by Peter Jensen and Edwin Pridham, who had moved to Napa from San Francisco to work on a new type of telephone receiver. Jensen recalled that “San Francisco businessman Dick O’Conner sent us out in the country where we could work undisturbed.” They bought their bungalow at 1606 F Street for $2,500. When they developed the “dynamic loud speaking telephone,” Jensen wrote, “It was the first `great voice’ … which became the voice of public speakers, the voice of film, and last but not least, the voice of radio.” Jensen and Pridham entertained Napans by playing records over their loudspeaker all that summer. The two left Napa in 1916 to establish a factory in Oakland, naming their company Magnavox, the Latin word for “great voice.”"
• “Theresa Tamburelli owned and operated the Depot Restaurant along with her husband Joseph. The Depot was next to the train station, across the street from Rough Rider and the Brooklyn Hotel, next to the train station. In 1930, Tamburelli ran out of pasta dough while cooking for a visiting team from San Francisco baseball players. Remembering her mother’s cooking, she boiled up tiny dumplings of ravioli filling, and named it “malfatti”.”

I truly enjoyed reading this book and hope you will consider it. ENJOY

I realize, I am very enthusiastic about Yountville and how often I portray it as ”the quintessential enclave” which I am fortunate enough to reside in and also have my office here. Yet, there is another part of the Napa Valley which many of us who live and work here experience on a near daily basis, the City of Napa. Quite often I find myself describing Napa as an “All American blue collar town”, one with many similarities to a mid-west town I spent a few of my growing-up years spent in, Massillon, Ohio. What is true about many world famous areas which attract large numbers of visitors, these places take on a certain persona and many of those who do pop in for a day or two, often wonder what is the truth about living there. 

Just recently, I came across this article in the Napa Register,   ”YouTuber surmounts fears to produce Napa documentary“, and finally had a chance to view the video referred to in the story. All I can say that based upon my 30 plus years of being here, this is one of the best portrayals of the City of Napa I have seen from a local’s perspective . Seth Herbey’s YouTube video, “City of Napa, California – Documentary of my hometown”, is worth the time it takes to view it and I hope it gives you a better insight into the Truth of what normal, daily life is like here. Enjoy