Joaquin Torres
Candidate for Assessor, San Francisco County
Joaquin Torres holds a degree from Stanford University. He also holds a degree from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. He has spent more than two decades in San Francisco city government. Under Mayor Gavin Newsom, he served as a liaison. He worked with the Latino community. He also worked with the American Indian community. He also worked with Districts Nine and Eleven. Under Mayor Edwin M. Lee, he ran the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services. He later ran the city's Invest in Neighborhoods program. He spent 12 years as president of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission. He later became director of a city office. It was the Office of Economic and Workforce Development. There, he led the city's COVID-19 relief effort. It helped both workers and businesses. Mayor London Breed named him Assessor-Recorder in February 2021. Since then, he has overseen big changes. He replaced an old property tax system. It was nearly 30 years old. He moved paper-based work online. He built a new records system too. His office calls it the first free system of its kind in California. It lets people view public records for free. It gave free online access to more than seven million documents. He also serves as board president of American Conservatory Theater. He leads the San Francisco Community Investment Fund as well.
Positions in brief
Torres says every property owner should pay a fair share. He has focused on making city government easier to use. This includes public property records. He wants residents to access records more easily. He wants businesses to access them more easily too.
Torres's campaign centers on fairness and access. He says property assessment should be applied evenly. That way, every owner pays a fair share. He also says government should act as a genuine partner. He names immigrants, entrepreneurs, working families, artists, and neighborhood institutions. In office, he points to evidence of that approach. He expanded free online access to recorded property documents. He cut fees for purchasing recorded documents online by more than 80%. He modernized a decades-old property tax assessment system. He has said he wants to leave the office in better shape. He wants it better than when he arrived.
On the issues
- Taxes & Cost of Living
Believes every property owner should pay their fair share under a fairly and evenly applied property assessment system.
“every property owner should pay their fair share”
Source → - Government, Elections & Democracy
Supports making city government and public property records more accessible to residents, immigrants, and small businesses.
“make San Francisco's government fairer, more accessible, and more connected to the people it serves”
Source →
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