In fiscal year 2024-2025, Los Angeles County collected approximately $21B in base property tax revenue, not including additional property-related taxes such as supplemental property tax revenue or direct assessments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Of that, $4.9B went to county coffers and $2B went to the city of Los Angeles, with the rest of the county\u2019s municipalities getting the balance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Placeholder\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/1750589843_18_placeholder.png\")
<\/p>\n
\n Damage from fires in the Los Angeles area in January 2025\n <\/p>\n
\u201cThe rise of property value [from residential properties] has more than offset, over the past couple of years, the loss in property tax revenue for cities, basically,\u201d National League of Cities Program Director of Research and Data Analysis Farhad Omeyr said, speaking generally about cities that have experienced natural disasters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In Los Angeles, the city and county aren’t in a position to leave money on the table.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The overall costs of responding to these fires have already contributed to fiscal challenges\u00a0in the city<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0county of Los Angeles<\/a>. The state is also experiencing\u00a0a striking deficit<\/a>,\u00a0and there is\u00a0no certainty<\/a>\u00a0around the arrival of federal funds to help rebound.\u00a0<\/p>\n A February post from\u00a0the state\u2019s Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office<\/a>\u00a0estimated that the Eaton and Palisades fires caused a reduction in assessed values that would produce a decrease in property tax payments of $100M to $200M in the 2025-2026 fiscal year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those tax dollars would have gone to the Los Angeles County and city of Los Angeles coffers, as well as the cities of Pasadena and Sierra Madre, local school districts and special districts.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those values will be recovered, the LAO said, but that recovery is likely to take several years.<\/p>\n Rebuilding from the fires is in progress. Approximately 2,100 applications to rebuild have been received across jurisdictions where the fires destroyed\u00a0an estimated 16,000 structures, including homes and businesses, according to a state progress tracker<\/a>.<\/p>\n Damage in the city of Los Angeles alone has been pegged at nearly $52B<\/a>.\u00a0The fire also damaged properties outside of city limits, including in Malibu and in the unincorporated neighborhood of Altadena, which is overseen by the county.<\/p>\n LA Mayor Karen Bass has called the effort \u201cthe\u00a0fastest disaster recovery in state\u00a0history,\u201d but the pace of progress has been criticized as too slow by some<\/a>\u00a0and too fast by others<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Prolonged loss of this revenue would begin to show up in the decline of a city to be able to provide critical services to residents, businesses and other stakeholders, according to Laurie Schoeman, chief impact officer at Partners for the Common Good and a senior housing adviser for the Biden administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n The municipalities affected by the fires, including LA County, are likely to see higher revenues due to the way property tax is calculated in California but also see higher expenditures as they seek to rebuild infrastructure and spend more on public safety,\u00a0a March paper<\/a>\u00a0from the UCLA Anderson School of Management found.\u00a0<\/p>\n The likelihood of these municipalities having budget deficits increases by 25%, with impacts being greater the worse the fire is.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n