Property Owners Pay Up, Mostly
Despite a slowing economy, Ventura County property owners paid their tax bills at the highest rate in at least a decade. But a tardy bank transfer really cost one of the county’s biggest taxpayers.
Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble, which owns $330 million in local property, missed its $1.68-million April 10 tax payment because of a bank foul-up and now faces a $168,000 fine.
“They simply blew getting the payment out,” Assistant Tax Collector Lawrence Matheney said. “They said they began the process of doing a transfer on April 9, but it went through several parts of the organization before it hit the bank. It stalled [there], and they didn’t react until April 11.”
A Procter & Gamble executive pressed for a waiver of the 10% late penalty, arguing that it was the bank’s fault, Matheney said. But the tax collector could make no exceptions.
“There are always a handful of people who come to the front counter April 11 and say, ‘If we’d mailed the check, you wouldn’t have gotten it until tomorrow anyway.’ But we have to tell them all no.”
The vast majority of taxpayers make the deadline.
Treasurer-Tax Collector Hal Pittman has received 97% of the $609 million owed by local taxpayers during 2000-01, up slightly over the year before and far ahead of payment rates during the recession of the early 1990s.
Still, the owners of about 16,000 parcels--4% of the total--missed their most recent tax payments, leaving nearly $19 million unpaid.
Among the top property-tax debtors are the owners of a Ventura hotel, an Oxnard shopping mall, a Moorpark golf course, two giant communications companies and a developer who’d hoped to build the largest community in county history until Moorpark voters blocked it.
Other large debtors include an Oxnard bank, a Ventura shopping mall owner, two Thousand Oaks auto companies, the operator of the Ventura Theatre and a carwash owned by former major league baseball star Lenny Dykstra.
The county has no way to force payment from delinquent owners until they fall five years in arrears. Then county officials can seize the property and sell it to the highest bidder.
As a result, the tax collector has not made an effort--other than mailing the semiannual tax bill--to collect from Ventura County’s largest tax debtors. But before the end of the tax year on June 30, those owners, already facing a 10% penalty, will be notified of an extra 1.5% penalty each month from then on.
That onerous progressive tax has caught up with the Texas owner of Vintage at the Rose shopping center in Oxnard, the Texas owner of the Clarion Hotel in Ventura, Simi Valley carwash owner Dykstra and Messenger Investment Co. of Irvine.
Messenger, which also owns property as Strathearn Ventura Partners and Hidden Creek Ranch Investors, owes more than $275,000. That includes about $99,000 this tax year.
Messenger had planned to build 3,200 houses on 4,300 acres in the rolling hills north of Moorpark, but a 1999 anti-sprawl ballot initiative reversed City Council approval. In a continuing legal battle, a state appeals court last month invalidated Moorpark’s annexation of Hidden Creek Ranch.
“It is far from dead, and we’ll just keep plugging away to get it done,” said Messenger general counsel Bruce Poetter. “But right now those taxes are probably going to be paid based on the resolution of the situation with the ranch.”
The second-largest tax debtor behind Procter & Gamble is Clarion Hotel owner Ventura Hospitality Inc., a Texas firm that bought the beach hotel for $11 million in 1999.
The unpaid Clarion debt this year is $118,981, and its total debt with penalties has reached $246,000. The hotel’s general manager did not return telephone calls last week.
The failure of AT&T; Wireless to pay its $99,038 bill by April 10 and GE American Communications’ $88,026 delinquency caught state and local officials off guard.
“That’s shocking that they haven’t paid their assessments,” said Dick Johnson, who oversees property tax assessments for the state Board of Equalization. “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
Matheney said AT&T; missed only its April 10 payment, and GE missed both payments this tax year.
But GE spokeswoman Monica Morgan said the company has owned a satellite tracking station in Somis since 1974 and has never missed a tax payment.
“According to all of our records, everything has been paid,” she said.
Matheney said GE did pay the tax on its Somis parcel but is delinquent on a statewide Board of Equalization assessment of which Ventura County receives a portion.
“There remains an unpaid bill for $88,000,” Matheney said. “GE missed both installments.”
The Tierra Rejada Golf Club, another large taxpayer, also disputed the county’s tax assessment. Spokesman Robert Shaver said the golf facility opened in late 1999, not 1998 as county assessments indicate, and the county is recalculating the tax.
“We’re working with the assessor right now on this,” Shaver said. “We’re a brand new facility. This is not a matter of taxes not being paid, it’s a matter of not being assessed for the right time period. We’re going to get a corrected tax bill.”
Matheney said the unpaid Tierra Rejada tax is for the current year and has nothing to do with older debt. However, the golf course tax bill is being changed, Matheney said. But it’s going up, not down, because the assessor’s office did not include the value of the course clubhouse in its initial assessment.
No property owner was more surprised to make the tax collector’s debtor list than Macerich Buenaventura Ltd., which operates the $100-million Pacific View Mall in Ventura.
Macerich owes nearly $48,000 in back taxes because it owns the land under the closed Montgomery Ward store near the mall. Macerich will either pay the bill or make sure the new owner of the vacant store does, spokesman Sean Thompson said.
“We’ll take care of it,” he said.
