Lake County supervisors will take up a settlement Tuesday in a nearly three-year fight over back taxes on the Vista Point Shopping Center in Lakeport. The center sat largely empty for more than a decade before Lake County Tribal Health bought it and began tearing it down.
The item, set for 9:10 a.m., asks the board to consider stipulations on eight appeals filed by Donica LLC, which owned the center from 2007 until Tribal Health bought it. A stipulation is a deal the assessor’s office and the owner work out between themselves. The board then accepts or rejects it. The board meets at 9 a.m. in the board chambers at 255 N. Forbes St. in Lakeport.
Land on the roll, buildings off
In January 2024, Assessor-Recorder Richard Ford’s office sent Donica eight notices, one for each tax year from 2016-17 through 2023-24. Each said the tax roll had carried only the land, at $1.1 million to $1.3 million a year, and nothing for the buildings.
The notices put the buildings on the tax roll: $3.18 million for 2016-17, rising each year to $3.62 million for 2023-24. Across the eight years, that comes to $27.2 million in building value the tax roll had missed.
The reason given on every notice was “Failure to report LEOP Change in Ownership.” LEOP is the state Board of Equalization’s Legal Entity Ownership Program. It tracks changes in who controls companies that own California property. Those changes usually don’t involve a recorded deed, so county assessors may not learn of them. A company must report such a change to the state, within 45 days before 2012 and within 90 days since.
Donica’s appeal forms list Jan. 11, 2011, as the date of the change in ownership.
What the owner says the buildings were worth
Donica filed its appeals on March 7, 2024. Managing member Matthew J. Riveras signed them. The company agreed with the county’s land values. It said the buildings were worth $828,061 for 2016-17, rising to $951,181 for 2023-24. That’s about a quarter of the assessor’s figure each year, or $7.1 million over the eight years. The forms also ask for a refund.
At the basic 1% property tax rate, the assessor’s building values would add about $272,000 in tax over the eight years. Donica’s values would add about $71,000. Those figures leave out local bond rates, penalties and interest.
A Lakeport city staff report for the City Council’s Dec. 5, 2023, meeting says the main building went up in the early 1980s as five connected buildings. One lost its roof in a 2008 collapse and had been open to the sky since. Four of the five stood empty. The report also says the property’s lack of care had “transformed it into a blight on the community of Lakeport.”
The city moved to have it declared a public nuisance that winter. Lake County News reported that Tribal Health bought the roughly 9-acre site in 2024 and began knocking the building down in July 2025.
Denied, then reopened
The board sits as the county’s board of equalization when it hears tax appeals, and the Donica case has been on its calendar for nearly two years.
Donica asked to put off its first hearing. On Feb. 25, 2025, supervisors instead voted 5-0 to deny all eight appeals.
Donica hired a tax lawyer, Michael T. Lebeau of Whittier. In a March 5, 2025, letter, he wrote that the board “acted outside the scope of its authority” under a state rule that gives an owner one delay as a matter of right.
On June 3, 2025, the board voted 5-0 to reopen the appeals and set a hearing for that November.
In October 2025, Lebeau and the assessor’s office agreed to postpone that hearing “so that we can continue to work towards a mutually agreeable resolution of these appeals.” The board moved the hearing to March 3, 2026. That day it put the case off again, to Nov. 3, 2026, on a 3-1 vote. Supervisor E.J. Crandell voted no, and Supervisor Helen Owen was absent.
The Donica item is one of two tax appeals on Tuesday’s calendar. At 1 p.m., the board resumes a hearing on vineyard owner Andre Gueziec’s appeals, which it continued from Nov. 3. On Nov. 3, the board also approved deals that cut E&J Gallo’s vineyard values by more than half.
As of Friday, the only document attached to Tuesday’s Donica item in the county’s online file was the set of 2024 appeal forms. It doesn’t show where the two sides landed. On those forms, the assessor’s office put the buildings at $27.2 million over eight years. Donica put them at $7.1 million.
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