San Antonio Report
by Shari Biediger
After 42 years, Michael Amezquita is walking away from his property tax career that began literally by accident.
In September, Amezquita announced his plans to retire on Jan. 5 after 20 years with the Bexar County Appraisal District (BCAD) as its chief appraiser, a job he knows has made him unpopular, but one many officials say he took on with confidence and good faith.
In recent remarks congratulating Amezquita on his upcoming retirement, Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia (D4) called him “an exemplary leader serving in a not-so-popular role.”
“We know that a career in public service can be daunting and thankless, especially in your role,” Rocha Garcia said. “But through your work, we have ushered in an era of innovation, growth and progress for the Bexar County Appraisal District.”
Amezquita fell into the career “quite by accident,” he said. The Austin native from a working-class family pumped gas and sold tamales after losing a football scholarship at Texas State University due to an injury during a horseplay incident.
He went on to attend Austin Community College and began working as a clerk in a delinquent tax attorney’s office for the City of Austin. “I just needed a job,” he said.
After county appraisal districts were established in 1981, Amezquita continued the work for Travis County.
He moved to Brownsville in 1995. “I was hired by the Cameron [County] Appraisal District to kind of go in there and clean up their office — it was a mess,” he said. But, “it wasn’t as big a mess as [BCAD] was.”
In 2003, Amezquita was hired to head up the Bexar County Appraisal District, a job he didn’t want initially, he said. That, too, happened by accident.
A BCAD board member in 2002, Joe Alderete was attending a conference in Austin when an ice storm stranded him overnight. That led to a chance encounter with Amezquita and an hours-long discussion about the problems at BCAD.
Outdated computer systems and processes were making it a challenge for the county’s taxing entities to budget accurately for the upcoming year based on the tax base, Alderete said.
The former city councilman persuaded Amezquita to apply for the chief appraiser role in San Antonio and the board made him an offer.
“It was like day and night — he was the true manager of Bexar County Appraisal District in the sense that he knew what to do and he started at the bottom and worked his way up,” Alderete said.
Amezquita hired the International Association of Assessing Officers to conduct a study of the district’s practices. The investigators found 83 defects in how appraisals were being conducted.
“Fixing that was very difficult because when people are conditioned to do the wrong thing consistently and systemically, it’s hard to undo that,” he said.
Amezquita set out to hold the organization’s managers accountable, he said, and made sure it sent out appraisal notices on time and made sure the management team was on hand to help staff with the process.
He instituted a culture of service. “I don’t care how upset they are, I don’t care how angry they are, I don’t care how belligerent they are — and we’ve had death threats — you treat [taxpayers] like it’s my mom,” he told BCAD staff. “And if you can’t handle it, hand it to me, let me deal with it.”
David Carreon asks Michael Amezquita, chief appraiser at the Bexar Appraisal District, why the burden to prove property value falls on the property owner during a property tax workshop in 2022.
Credit: Nick Wagner / San Antonio Report
Former County Judge Nelson Wolff called Amezquita a change agent.
He was controversial in his efforts to balance the value of commercial property and residential property, Wolff said of the chief appraiser. “But he carried out the demands of the legislation which required him to do most of this stuff and he got a lot of criticism, but I think overall he did a good job.”
The county appraisal district is responsible for appraising property values for taxing purposes. It is the agency taxpayers go to when protesting and appealing their property appraisal to reduce their tax burden.
By contrast, the Bexar County Tax Assessor-Collector assesses, or calculates, the taxes on each property in the county, and then collect those tax payments. The tax assessor-collector is Albert Uresti.
Amezquita likes to remind taxpayers that he is not in control of how much they pay in taxes — the property owners have that power.
“We set your value in January, but we have no idea what your tax liability is going to be,” he said. “Until that tax rate is set, your taxes are zero.” But it’s also a system of winners and losers, he laments.
During the last legislative session, state lawmakers passed several bills related to property taxes. One requires appraisal district boards to include three elected positions among its positions appointed by local taxing entities, such as a school district.
The new directors are to be elected by a majority vote at a county general election for four-year terms. The change is intended to make the people who oversee appraisals more accountable to property owners. Amezquita opposes the idea.
The districts exist in order to remove the political aspect from the appraisal process, Amezquita said, “so the guy who’s creating a budget isn’t creating the value and controlling your hearing.”
The Bexar County Appraisal District is responsible for appraisal of property values for tax purposes.
Credit: Nick Wagner / San Antonio Report
Before appraisal districts were created, a taxing entity like the City of San Antonio did the appraisals and also collected the taxes and set the rates. “They controlled everything,” he said.
The 61-year-old Amezquita said he is ready to step away from the day-to-day responsibility of managing BCAD’s 186-member staff and $23 million operating budget. Retirement is possible, he said, because he has been very careful with his money. “I’m even more careful with [taxpayer] money.”
The district board of directors named assistant chief appraiser Rogelio Sandoval the interim chief.
Amezquita is already planning to travel some. “All I’ve ever done is work — I haven’t had a summertime vacation in 42 years,” he said.
Reflecting on his two decades at BCAD, Amezquita likes to say he turned the district on its head.
So when he vacated his corner office weeks ago and moved into a cubicle farm on the second floor to make room for his successor, Amezquita turned his nameplate on the modular wall upside down.
This article has been updated to correctly identify the Bexar County Appraisal District’s interim chief appraiser.