Media Ecosystem Follow-Up #1 · Municipal Tax Roll & Property Valuation Investigation

The Proposition 13 Divide: How Frozen 1975 Assessments & Wall Street Buyouts Split Burbank’s Tax Roll 21.8×

Under California’s 1978 Proposition 13, commercial and industrial land is reassessed to market value only when a parcel is sold or when a corporation undergoes a greater-than-50% change in voting control under California Revenue & Taxation Code § 64(c). Auditing 682 major non-residential parcels across Burbank’s Los Angeles County Assessor roll (Public_Landbase/FeatureServer/17) by their statutory Land Base Year (landbaseyr) reveals a dramatic structural divide: commercial parcels still anchored to a 1975–1979 base year are assessed at an average of just $155,638 per acre ($3.57/sq. ft.), whereas commercial parcels reassessed between 2018 and 2026 are taxed at $3,387,670 per acre ($77.77/sq. ft.) — 21.8 times higher per acre.

Data as of Oct 28, 2026 from Download Top 150 Commercial Parcel Tax Roll CSV , Burbank GIS Assessor Parcel Roll (Public_Landbase/17) , CA Rev. & Tax. Code § 64(c) (Corporate Change of Control) and Inside Burbank’s $7.4B Media Ecosystem . Recomputed from official source records; see methodology.

1. The 21.8× Divide: Burbank’s Commercial Tax Roll by Land Base Year Cohort

Every parcel in the City of Burbank’s Assessor GIS layer carries two explicit Proposition 13 tracking fields: landbaseyr (the fiscal year in which the underlying land’s base-year value was last established) and imprbaseyr (the year the building improvements were last assessed or revalued after new construction).

Aggregating all 426 major private commercial, studio, retail, hospitality, and industrial parcels in our high-value/large-acreage extract across five historical landbaseyr cohorts exposes how four decades of 2%-per-year compounded caps have detached legacy corporate land assessments from current market values:

What This Means for Municipal and School District Revenue

If the 203.1 acres of commercial land still sitting on a 1975–1979 base year ($31.61M assessed land value) were assessed at the average rate of the 2018–2026 commercial cohort ($3.39M/acre = $688.0M), Burbank’s taxable land roll would be $656.4 million higher. At Los Angeles County’s ~1.1% effective tax rate (1% general levy plus voter-approved school and transit debt overrides), that single 203-acre cohort represents roughly $7.22 million per year in shielded property tax — including ~$1.3M/year for the City of Burbank General Fund and ~$2.8M/year for Burbank Unified School District (BUSD) and educational funds.

2. Why AT&T’s 2018 Buyout Reset Warner Bros.’s Tax Roll — While Disney Kept Its 1975 Base

The most revealing natural experiment in Burbank’s tax roll is the side-by-side comparison between Walt Disney Studios (`500 S. Buena Vista St.`) and Warner Bros. Studios (`4000 Warner Blvd.`).

• Why Warner Bros. Has a 2018 Land Base Year (`$91.65/sq. ft.`): Under California Revenue & Taxation Code § 64(c) and the State Board of Equalization’s Legal Entity Ownership Program (LEOP), when one corporation acquires more than 50% of the voting stock of another corporation, every parcel of California real estate owned by the acquired corporation and its subsidiaries undergoes a mandatory Proposition 13 reassessment. When AT&T Inc. closed its $85 billion acquisition of 100% of Time Warner Inc. on June 14, 2018, the LA County Assessor reset the landbaseyr and imprbaseyr on all Burbank parcels owned by subsidiary WARNER BROS ENTERTAINMENT INC to 2018:
  • Main Lot (`4000 Warner Blvd`, AIN 2485-021-011, 70.94 acres): Land reassessed on a 2018 base to $283,185,571 ($3,991,903/acre, or $91.65/sq. ft.), plus $448.83M in improvements = $732.01M total roll.
  • South / Technical Lot (`461 S California St`, AIN 2485-022-003, 19.35 acres): Land reassessed on a 2018 base to $77,225,843 ($3,990,999/acre, or $91.63/sq. ft.), plus $125.04M in improvements = $202.26M total roll.
  • 3300 Warner Blvd (`AIN 2485-022-002`, 3.85 acres): Land reassessed on a 2018 base to $15,368,266 ($3,991,757/acre, or $91.63/sq. ft.) = $80.64M total roll.
  • Why didn’t the 2022 Warner Bros. Discovery merger trigger another reset? Because the April 2022 Reverse Morris Trust merger was structured so that AT&T shareholders received 71% of the combined Warner Bros. Discovery stock while Discovery shareholders received 29% — keeping continuity of majority shareholder interest above 50% or within the 2018 valuation plateau.
• Why Walt Disney Keeps Its 1975 Land Base Year (`$6.12/sq. ft.`): Because The Walt Disney Company has been the surviving acquirer in all of its major corporate transactions (buying Capital Cities/ABC in 1996, Pixar in 2006, Marvel in 2009, Lucasfilm in 2012, and 21st Century Fox in 2019) and no single person or entity has ever acquired >50% of Disney’s voting stock since 1975, its 42.81-acre flagship lot at 500 S. Buena Vista St. (AIN 2443-022-009) still carries landbaseyr = 1975:
  • Its 42.81 acres of land are assessed at just $11,415,870 ($266,664/acre, or $6.12/sq. ft.) — exactly 1/15th of Warner Bros. Main Lot’s $91.65/sq. ft. land assessment and 1/16.4th of the Warner Ranch Lot’s $100.40/sq. ft. land assessment.
  • However, because new construction triggers an assessment on the newly built structure without revaluing the land, Disney’s continuous campus buildout carries an average improvement base year of 2000 and $494,918,190 in assessed building improvements.
  • The Annual Land Tax Shield on 500 S. Buena Vista St.: If Disney’s 42.81 acres of land were assessed at Warner Bros. Main Lot’s $91.65/sq. ft. ($170.91M instead of $11.42M), the taxable land value on that single parcel would rise by $159.49 million — meaning Proposition 13’s frozen 1975 land base saves Disney approximately $1.75 million every year in land property taxes on its main lot alone.

3. The Top 25 Commercial, Studio & Industrial Parcels in Burbank (with Land Base Years)

The table below ranks Burbank’s 25 highest-valued non-residential parcels from our 150-parcel extract (download full 150-row CSV), showing how landbaseyr directly governs land valuation per square foot:

*On multi-building studio lots (4000 Warner Blvd, 500 S Buena Vista St, 3701 W Oak St), the Assessor’s bldg1sqft..bldg5sqft fields record only the first five sub-parts, while the dollar value of all soundstages and office buildings on the lot is captured in imprval.

4. Other Notable Legacy Land Shields on the Burbank Roll

• Lakeside Golf Club of Hollywood (AIN 2485-017-005, 17.16-acre Burbank portion): Located immediately south of Warner Bros. Studios along the Los Angeles River, the Burbank parcel of this private celebrity golf club carries a 1984 land base year and is assessed at just $746,612 in land value ($43,509/acre, or $1.00 per square foot) and $67,722 in improvements ($814,334 total) — reinforced by California Constitution Article XIII Section 10’s special “nonprofit golf course” assessment rule, which prohibits assessors from valuing 10+ acre golf courses at their commercial or studio-expansion market value.
• Valhalla Memorial Park (VALHALLA PROPERTIES, 3900 Valhalla Dr, AIN 2412-001-064, 65.90 acres): Assessed on a 1992 base year at $353,079 in land value ($5,358/acre, or $0.12/sq. ft.) along with partial cemetery exemptions.
• Media Studios North Legacy Parcels (`3100` & `3031 Thornton Ave`, `2255 N Ontario St`): Acquired by Worthe Real Estate Group partnerships (`3100 PARTNERS LLC`, `3311 PARTNERS LP`, `2255 PARTNERS LP`) between 1996 and 1998, these 10.71 acres of prime media office/post-production land are still assessed at $18.69 to $19.44 per square foot ($814K–$847K/acre) — less than one-tenth the per-square-foot land assessment of recently traded Media District parcels.

Read the Companion Media Ecosystem Investigations