Residents of L.A. suburb pay huge taxes, too

The city of Bell, Calif., did more than just give top city administrators some of the largest salaries in the nation: Residents in the working-class town also pay the highest property taxes of all but one of Los Angeles County's 88 cities, according to interviews and records.

All county property owners pay 1 percent general property tax, along with special or direct assessments levied by their municipalities. The countywide average of all tax rates is 1.16 percent, or $11.60 for every $1,000 of assessed value.

Bell's rate is 1.55 percent - nearly half again as much as those in such affluent L.A. County enclaves as Beverly Hills, Palos Verdes Estates and Manhattan Beach, and significantly higher than just about everywhere else in the county, according to records provided by the county Auditor-Controller's Office at the Los Angeles Times' request.

That means that the owner of a home in Bell with an assessed value of $400,000 would pay about $6,200 in annual property taxes. The owner of the same home in Malibu, Calif., whose rate is 1.10 percent, would pay just $4,400.

The only place with a higher rate for residents is the City of Industry - but that city has only 21 residential parcels that are affected.

The records seem to confirm complaints by some Bell residents who expressed outrage that they seemed to be paying exceedingly high taxes at the same time as the City Council was paying the city manager nearly $800,000 and council members were paying themselves nearly $100,000.

"I didn't realize we were so unique here in this little community," said Dorothy Danna, 68, a widow who has lived in Bell for 40 years and is losing her home to foreclosure. "I thought everyone paid as much as we did. . . . That does not make me very happy."

Bell, a largely immigrant town of about 39,000, owes its lofty rate to a combination of factors, records show, including bond debt and a "retirement tax" approved by local voters in 1944 that put property owners on the hook for some of the cost of municipal employees' pensions. Since 2006, county records show, those local taxes have doubled. So have direct assessments for trash collection, sewer maintenance and other services, which also have driven residents' tax bills higher.

The Times reported earlier this week that the city had cut spending on police and community services, even as it continued to raise salaries for City Manager Robert Rizzo, Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia and Police Chief Randy Adams to some of the highest in the nation.

Adams's salary was $457,000 and Spaccia's was $376,000 before all three resigned amid the public uproar created after the Times reported the amounts earlier this month.