Larry Stone Rolls On: Santa Clara County’s Assessor Retires After 30 Years

Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone — who has presided over three decades of massive taxable property value increases as Silicon Valley’s industries boomed, busted and boomed again — is retiring.

Stone, 84, announced last week he is stepping down on July 6, a little more than thirty years after he began running the assessor’s office, and nearly 50 years after he was first elected to public office. He is the longest-serving elected official in Santa Clara County.

“I think it’s my time,” Stone told KQED. “I don’t want to embarrass myself,” he said with a laugh.

Stone is a regional icon, not only because his name is on the property value assessment notices sent to hundreds of thousands of residents every year — “I call them love notes,” he said — but also because of his deep involvement in community building and political work outside of his day job.

He’s been on dozens of boards, commissions, councils, task forces and advisory groups, sharing his time, knowledge and money supporting the arts, education, professional sports, economic development and housing, and has long been recognized as one of the most powerful leaders in Silicon Valley.

“I’m not one to not be active. I mean, that’s not in my DNA, ever,” Stone said in his office this week, which even in the process of a move out, was still largely full of memorabilia from his life.

Walls and shelves are lined with framed photos of Stone with his family, or world leaders such as Fidel Castro, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, local politicians, as well as clippings from just some of the many news articles and features written about him through the decades.

One of them – a story published in the Sunnyvale Sun 20 years ago – focused on Stone’s prominence and ubiquity in the region even then, and noted he “won the honor of being named the 2004 ‘Royal Schmoozer’ by the San Jose-Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce.”

He also led campaigns to try to bring the San Francisco Giants to the South Bay in the 1980s, and later supported the effort to bring the then-Oakland A’s to San José, neither of which materialized.

But his experience served the region well, as he would later help broker the deal that brought the San Francisco 49ers to Santa Clara and led the campaign to pass Measure J, which authorized the construction of Levi’s Stadium.

Inside the walls of the assessor’s office, Stone has presided over a greater than 500% increase in value of the assessment roll — the entire estimated value of all real property like land and buildings, and business personal property, like computers, machines and furniture — in Santa Clara County.

When he first stepped into the office in January 1995, the assessment roll was worth about $115 billion. But due in large part to the continued growth of the computing and technology industry, land, buildings and homes alike have grown in value, now worth about $725 billion altogether, Stone said.

That hasn’t changed Stone’s approach to the work, which he said is more of an art than a science, and requires an even keel.

Assessing property in California is already unique because of Proposition 13’s limitations on property taxes. But working in Silicon Valley, taking on tech behemoths and other private industry billionaires armed with benches of attorneys angling to pay less in property taxes can be a taxing game.

For example, Stone said, Apple’s spaceship campus in Cupertino is “the most unique property probably in the United States,” and not something that can easily be assessed with standard metrics.

A long time 49ers season ticket holder, Stone also vehemently disagreed with a decision by the county’s Assessment Appeals Board, which reduced the tax bill owed by the team for Levi’s Stadium by about half, from $12 million to $6 million annually, after the team appealed Stone’s assessment for the facility.

Stone argued the appeals board used an overly simplistic approach to value the stadium, not accounting for all the special events and concerts it hosts outside of football games, and he later sued the board, but lost in court in late 2023.

“I believe that that building, the stadium, is not properly assessed. But I did all I could — my office did all we could — to arrive at an accurate value. The court disagreed,” Stone said, recalling the saga.

Stone didn’t grow up hoping to be an assessor, but there may have been signs early on that he’d be a good fit for the role. Sifting through a stack of personal photos, Stone pulled out a grade-school image of his smiling young face during his campaign for school secretary. His campaign promise to his classmates was written across the image: “Dependable and accurate records.”

As a young, single man, Stone started his professional career as an investment banker working on Wall Street in New York, living in an apartment on Manhattan’s east side with a coworker, a gig and a lifestyle he said was “heaven.”

After being transferred to the Bay Area, where he met his wife Carmen and had three children, Stone and two business partners started a real estate investment firm on Sand Hill Road, where the company neighbored Kleiner Perkins, one of the most prominent venture capital firms in Silicon Valley.

He went on to develop very low-income housing — a San Francisco single-resident occupancy building — and an affordable apartment complex in San José, both of which he still has an ownership stake in today.

Stone, who has lived in Sunnyvale since 1970, started his political career at home, running for and being elected to the City Council there in 1975, and serving two four-year terms before terming out. After waiting a city-mandated two years off the council and running again, he won two more elections, serving a total of 16 years on the council, including two turns as mayor.

From City Council to Assessor, Stone has never lost an election, running largely unopposed in his eight races for assessor. He was elected to the assessor’s office in 1994, but emphasizes that the work is not political, even though it’s an elected role.

James Williams, county executive of Santa Clara County, said people in the county might not realize the intricacies and the complexity involved in the work of the assessor, but said Stone has done an “outstanding” job.

“Having confidence in the integrity and the efficacy of the property tax system is absolutely vital to every single service all of us take for granted from our local governments collectively,” Williams told KQED. “Schools, parks, roads — the list goes on and on.”

Property taxes, which are raised and spent locally, account for roughly 40% of the county’s general fund budget, according to the county, and the largest chunk of those funds, about 44%, goes toward K-12 schools in the region.

Stone said he’s happy with his track record, noting that during his run of assessing the homes of everyday residents, as well as the major campuses and buildings of world-beating tech companies, he’s only added one additional staff member than was on payroll when he started.

He said he’s “returned $35 million of my budget back to the general fund unspent” over his career.

What he’s most proud of, however, is what he said is a more than 90% customer satisfaction rate, based on surveys given to residents who call, email or visit the office.

“We’re a government tax office. We give people news that they don’t necessarily like. I submit that over 90% customer service satisfaction rating for the assessor’s office is unheard of,” Stone said.

With his high marks from residents, a finished assessment roll for 2025 and his office’s recent overhaul of its aging computer system software — a years-long effort — Stone felt now was as good a time to step away as any.

However, the timing of Stone’s departure has rankled some in the county. Stone has often been quoted questioning the qualifications of his potential challengers for assessor during past elections.

After choosing to run again in 2022, only to retire in the midst of his term, Stone’s decision forced the Board of Supervisors to call for a special election to find a replacement to finish the term that runs through 2026, due to existing state and county laws.

The board approved the special election for Nov. 4 of this year. If a candidate in that race doesn’t win a majority of votes, there will be a runoff election between the top two candidates on Dec. 30. The cost to run the first special election will be roughly $13 million, and roughly $26 million total if a runoff is needed, due to the voting infrastructure that is required under state law, officials said.

Supervisor Margaret Abe-Koga, during the special June 25 meeting to approve the election, called the situation “very unfortunate.”

“It’s hard to stomach the cost of this, but we really have no legal options otherwise,” she said.

After Stone’s retirement, Assistant Assessor Greg Monteverde will serve as the acting assessor, and the Board of Supervisors will appoint an interim assessor later this year, likely in August, to run the office until the special election is complete.

In late 2026, the assessor’s seat will be up for a standard election.

Stone said he thinks the special election requirement is a “total waste of money” and said he plans to advocate for changes to requirements for such situations in the future.

In response to concerns about his choice to retire now, leading to the high costs for the county, Stone said, “I didn’t create the rules. I make life choices that are best for me and best for my office.”

In the meantime, two candidates have announced their intention to run for the office in 2026, though they could also run in the special election.

One is Saratoga City Council Member Yan Zhao, and the other is Los Altos Vice Mayor Neysa Fligor, who are both terming out of their city roles next year. Fligor, who has worked with Stone to head up the software replacement project and previously worked in the county counsel’s office, has received Stone’s endorsement.

“Larry is a true public servant to his core,” Williams said of Stone’s decades of work, adding that whoever steps into the role next will need to carry that same passion.

“We’ve had an incredibly effective assessor office in Santa Clara County, and I’m absolutely confident that that will continue to be the case and that’s part of the legacy that Larry leaves us.”