By Robert Haugh
Santa Clara City Councilmember Kevin Park touts his financial expertise, but his track record with paying property taxes tells a different story.
Park has once again missed the deadline for paying his property taxes that were due at the end of last week. According to official records, Park hasn’t paid property taxes since 2023.
Park, who was re-elected in November 2024, cited his fiscal management as a key accomplishment.
In his recently filed Statement of Economic Interests, Park reported no income or assets for 2024. Previous filings disclosed income from his wife’s dental office and past employers.
For his role on the City Council, Park receives about $1,700 after taxes per month.
[…] Clara City Councilmember Kevin Park finally paid his property taxes that were delinquent since 2023. He paid $22,206 on August 19, […]
Perhaps everyone may be late on paying some sort of debt from time-to-time.
But, my prospective (and later) employers did perform credit checks as a condition of employment. Obviously, an indebted individual may be more inclined to promote one’s self interest and not be fully committed to the organization’s mission. Typically examples are those who steal from their employer.
In the public sphere, a public servant ought NOT be perceived as having any vulnerability. Most spies against the U.S. were public servants that were VULNERABLE. “Soviet intelligence agencies targeted Americans who were deemed vulnerable for recruitment as spies.” Many dumb Americans that could not manage their budgets turned to bribes from foreign countries. “Prominent examples include Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames, who received substantial payments for spying for the Soviet Union and Russia. Hanssen, an FBI agent, collected over $1.4 million over 15 years, while Ames, a CIA officer, received approximately $2.5 million over 9 years. These individuals were motivated by financial hardship…”
FINANCIAL HARDSHIP!
Park is ripe to spill Silicon Valley secrets to South Korea, which is somewhat hurting economically. Also, any “off the books” money from Jed York is probably welcomed.
Meet Kevin Park–Santa Clara’s mole.
Though I completely disagree on Mr Park on most issues, he has done something 95% of us would never do and that is running for a public office. For that, I admire most anyone who runs for an elected public office. I think he is essentially a decent person who has made decisions for the city I strongly disagree with. I also think it was terrible the way he and other city council members mocked public speakers. Not just Mr Park, but many others on the council would not have been elected without the 49ers buying the city elections. If the election had just gone on without tens of millions from the 49ers our council would have a different and better makeup. If Mr Park was not elected his delinquent taxes would not be an issue for the public, but unfortunately when he got elected his delinquent taxes became an issue for the public. If he was doing it for tax reasons that would not make sense as his reported income is so low. Also, as a public official, his duty is to pay his taxes and set an example and not pay his taxes late for a tax write-off, though I do not think that is why the payment is late.
A big issue that I see is when people get elected to office who appear to have personal financial problems are subject to outside financial temptations, but even bigger is that they are making decisions involving hundreds of millions of our tax dollars to run a city of 140,000 citizens, FIFA, Superbowl, etc, and yet we end up with the likes of a convicted felon, Anthony Becker, deciding contracts worth millions, while he supposedly was down to under $100 in his own checking account. We have a disgraced former councilmember who is now on work release, who until his removal was making huge decisions with his voting on massive issues involving our city’s future for generations to come. So very wrong and immoral.
We need election reform to keep the 49ers, etc, from ruining our city even more.
This report is good because it show Park is financially desperate. Robert’s previous reports show that Park stiffs nonprofits and that’s important too. Park is a professional failure. He’s got money problems. He is open to corruption. The 49ers know he needs money. Not hard to connnect the dots.
Retired CPA here. My advice to Mr. Park is to pay his taxes on time to avoid the substantial late fees. He will not benefit from the current SALT deduction ($10K) given his income. As for anyone else who projects that SALT will increase is just gambling given the dysfunctional nature of our federal government. There’s also something to be said about how our local elected officials should be fiscally responsible role models when it comes to paying the government that pays them. But I leave that debate for another time.
Given that the current $10k cap was put in place by Trump in 2018 – does anyone really think he will raise it? Not a chance.
I agree with CPA – avoiding penalties is the only guaranteed strategy to win.
As fun as this type of topic is, it is not newsworthy. Choosing to delay or pull forward property taxes is a pretty standard tax strategy. Being delinquent is not particularly newsworthy (defaulting would be). For instance, depending on how you think the national SALT tax changes will go, it may make sense this year to eat the late payment penalty in order to defer both 2024-2025 tax payments to the year with the higher SALT limit. I believe property taxes don’t go to default until the next tax season (so july). And that same logic would have held true last year, if you expected tax changes this year to be retroactive.
Also the first property tax payment in 2024 is from the 2023-2024 year (April of 2024 would have been 2023 taxes), so saying he hasn’t paid since 2023 suggests that he missed that years payment as well.
To be fair, Park thought Jed York was going to pay it.