SanFranciscoSentinel.com 2005
Monday, March 21, 2005

SanFranciscoSentinel.com Photos by LUKE THOMAS

Four months after paying reduced taxes, Residential Builders Association (RBA) heavyweight Joe Cassidy enlivened his Hi Dive holiday party on Pier 32 with Cassidy’s newly purchased $400,000 hydrofoil Toxic Rocket.

The leisure craft’s $65,000 engine must be rebuilt or replaced after every quarter-mile race, suffering fatigue failure from going zero to 240 miles per hour in 4.8 seconds.

Its speed may rival footwork of Cassidy’s seamless friendships.

At question are parcels of Bay front land, projected by developers ripe for gentrification, in the Bayview District.

Cassidy, aka Shipyard Holdings LLC, bought the land at city auction on April 2, 2001, for $1,580,491.75.

The property was in tax default by previous owners who were represented by Luce, Forward, Hamilton and Scripts, RBA attorneys.

Bankruptcy cases were settled by the summer of 2001, and a final one by October of 2002.

Mabel Teng, City Assessor, valued the properties at $4,230,450 shortly after Cassidy purchased them.

Cassidy declined to pay property taxes owed on the reassessed valuation while continuing to decline to pay the taxes overdue at time of purchase.

First American Title Company did not note that back taxes were owed and unpaid.

Several employees of First American Title Company are members of the RBA, including Cathy Bryant, Eva Chan, and Michael Forkin.

With Cassidy owing more than $390,000 in back taxes, the property was declared "Subject to Power to Sell."

The Cassidy properties should have been sold at auction in April of 2003 by the Office of Treasurer and Tax Collector. Of the 79 other properties in default that were put to auction at that time, 53 owed the city less than $2,000, well below the back taxes owed by Cassidy.

Had Cassidy's properties remained in tax default status, auction proceeds from sale of his lands would have been applied toward his unpaid city taxes.

Instead, the Tax Collector’s Office removed Joe Cassidy’s parcels from tax default status at direction of the Tax Assessor's Office, which cited overvaluation and owner bankruptcy proceedings.

Former Teng campaign volunteer Harvey Huey lowered the Cassidy property valuation, while Huey served as a volunteer in the Assessor's Office, by $3.3 million to $890,588 in March, 2004, some $700,000 less than what Joe Cassidy paid for the property at auction in 2001.

Huey's appraisal notes indicate reduced valuation was in line with fair market price because "many lots underwater," even though lots were underwater during prior ownership and higher valuation.

Huey -- now risen to trainee designation within the Tax Assessor’s Office -- seems to have lacked expertise in tidesland property, considered by developers highly desired beach front land.

Such underwater tidesland can quickly support construction by use of modern pile-drivers.

And Cassidy has the most modern pile-driver of them all.

Cassidy “has just developed the world’s first silent pile-driver,” noted Examiner columnist P. J. Corkery December 22, 2004.