Day To Be Living

Well, I had other things I considered writing about today, and rather than running out of things to write about each day, my list seems to be growing longer! I don’t want to think about ICE, let alone write about them, but after discovering something new today about them property tax related, it was on my mind. This is the last thing I hope I’ll want to say about the Goon Squad for a long time, fingers crossed! So here goes:

I was a bit surprised to discover that the despicable, racist, Republican landlord who leases to these masked gestapo, did NOT file a current property value appeal for this upcoming Property Values Appeal Board (PVAB) season. I was a bit surprised the ICE building wasn’t actively appealed, given that it’s classified as an office. It’s no secret offices have struggled as a property class in Portland particularly. Moreover, the real market value (RMV) of this property was several million dollars above any potential tax savings, so it would not be mathematically “easy” to appeal. That said, the current appeal season is for the 1/1/2025 assessment date, which was of course before Biden left office.

What will be really interesting to see is what happens a year from now, for the 1/1/2026 assessment date, after the Trump 2.0 shitshow commenced. If there’s no PVAB appeal a year from now, that will be slightly more surprising, although not shocking, given that site inspections are part of the property tax appeal process. It’s highly unlikely local government personnel would be granted a site visit, given the public animosity between the City of Portland and this landlord. It’s not a conceptual leap to think another local jurisdictional headache might not be worth an unguaranteed and potentially long shot property tax savings. But this guy has a long, publicly documented appeal history over decades with different properties in different counties, so who knows?

The address is 4310 S Macadam Ave in Portland, Oregon, 97239 (Multnomah County tax account number R327918).

The landlord’s name is Stuart Lindquist, and he operates under the State of Oregon registered LLC name “4310 Building LLC.” From just a Google search, you’ll quickly see what I mean about this dickwad. And anything owned by this private LLC, or anyone with a real property economic interest at all in it whatsoever. It’s amazing how much property information is publicly available, let alone what the local press covers, and rightly so. You can also learn more about the Stuart Lindquist and his 4310 Building LLC by going to the Oregon Secretary of State business lookup sos.oregon.gov/business/… A great resource indeed!

All info on site addresses, account numbers, property ownership, tax amounts, and appeal history for most real property (land and building) accounts are required to be publicly available record by statute, unless expressly suppressed, exempted, or stated otherwise (such as business personal property or real property machinery and equipment returns that must keep secret). I am not sharing any information that isn’t publicly available.

So, did I personally look up all the available real property tax account details for ICE’s private landlord? Of course I did! It’s perfectly within my right to do so. You can too! Check it out: multcoproptax.com

Trust me, as long as the state-sponsored kidnappers tragically have long-term tenancy, and many more than one newsworthy permit violation, I’d LOVE to see this building get taxed as much as humanly possible. I guess one unintended consequence of having this gestapo building privately owned is that there is an extra $300,000ish in tax revenue going to our local community. If the federal government owned the building too, there’d be no taxes at all. But a private landlord leasing to the federal government? No exemption!

That said, $300K in tax revenue is negligible relative to the harms being done. In fact, just impact fees to the City have exceeded revenue multiple times over. The building is a net tax liability by any reasonable measure. So $300,000 is really barely covering it. I’d MUCH rather have no ICE related tax revenue and ICE abolished.

It was reported that ICE pays Lindquist $2.45 million per year in rent. If true, depending on the lease structure, it’s plausible enough. Given that, property taxes at $300K would be roughly 12% of rent, especially if it’s a gross or even a modified gross lease often found with offices, rather than a triple net structure more often found in retail and industrial real estate. I’d guess it’s a gross lease with higher rent given that ICE probably wants to outsource property management and expense logistics, given that they’re far more hyper-fixated on harming, profiling, and detaining anyone nonwhite presenting, than managing real estate portfolios efficiently or effectively. See this article: nextcity.org/urbanist-…

That said, it really says a lot that ICE must operate as a tenant directly, rather than as a for-profit private prison contractor company like GeoGroup or Core Civic, which would expressly violate Oregon’s Sanctuary Law. That said, it’s still the shittiest, slimiest circumvention of Sanctuary policy to have ICE presence at all, with a private landlord profiting, even if Multnomah County gets to taking a $300,000 cut as a “silver lining.” It’d still be far better for society to get $300,000K in tax revenue from private equity, Amazon, or Walmart, or better yet, from none of the above, over the status quo. But I’ll take $300,000 over nothing to make up for their impact costs to the city, if the masked gestapo just won’t fucking leave. At least this comparatively sizable tax bill goes to exclusively woke and liberally-led taxing jurisdictions. Regardless of tax amounts, I hope impact fees make it no longer profitable to operate.

Have I fantasized about how much fun it would be to add, I don’t know… a billion dollars or two billion dollars in new tax assessment (known as “exception value”) to the account? You bet!

That said, do I want to keep my job? Also yes!

The minutiae of my job is invariably emotionally neutral. It’s mathy, analytical, and at times, a bit dry. I don’t take pride in how much or little something is assessed. It’s just about getting the value right, and acting fairly and equitably within the parameters of the law (however, Oregon’s property tax law is famously sometimes not fair or equitable).

But that said, I really loathe account number R327918. What a terrible property. Sewer plants, landfills, and prisons all sound like more appealing properties to assess taxes on.

You can also see the tax graphs, which I’ve included here: taxgraph.multco.us

Anyways, so that was a really geeky and very long-winded way of saying, fuck ICE. Abolish ICE. They can all go choke and suffocate on the fattest of cocks, for reasons obvious to anyone with the most basic of consciences.

Graphs: