Businesses Miss County’s Tax Deadline
Ventura County property owners, riding the crest of a housing boom, paid more of their taxes on time than at any point since the 1980s. But real estate investments didn’t pay off for several big business owners who failed to remit their taxes by the April 10 deadline.
The county tax collector has received more than 97% of the $680 million owed by local property owners for 2001-2002, up slightly from last fiscal year and far ahead of payment rates during the recession of the early 1990s.
Assistant Tax Collector Larry Matheny credited a real estate market that is among the hottest in county history. Low mortgage interest rates also fueled a loan refinancing frenzy that contributed to the high rate of payment.
“Loan and purchase escrows typically pay any property tax due,” Matheny said.
Still, the owners of about 16,000 parcels missed their most recent tax payments last month, leaving about $18.9 million unpaid.
“We’ve got delinquency notices out on the streets now, so things are really cooking,” Matheny said. “It flushes out all kinds of issues. It’s, ‘Hey, I never got a bill,’ or, ‘I got a corrected bill,’ or, ‘I got a supplemental bill,’ or, ‘I thought they were all the same thing.’
“It’s ‘Property Tax 101,’” he added. “And it’s not an easy class.”
Among the top property tax debtors this fiscal year are the owners of a giant music recording company, a hothouse tomato farm in Camarillo, an aging Simi Valley shopping center, a new east county golf course and a former baseball star’s carwash.
The reasons for tardiness range from a simple memory lapse in the case of an executive for Lost Canyons golf course in Simi Valley to reorganizational bankruptcy by the builder of a new housing tract near the ocean at Oxnard’s Mandalay Bay.
“It’s a big oops,” said Todd Yuba, controller at Lost Canyons, a $120-a-round club in the picturesque Santa Susana Mountains. “It was just an oversight. Our [financial officer] in Maryland was working on a project in Mississippi, and it just fell through the cracks.”
The oops cost Maryland-based Big Sky Country Club a $12,411 penalty.
“It’s not going to happen next year,” Yuba said. “I’ve put Dec. 10 and April 10 on my calendar.”
Matheny said the county has no way to collect from the delinquent owners until they fall five years in arrears. Only then can county officials 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 and a recent delinquency notice--to collect from those who still owe. But before the end of the tax year June 30, those owners, already facing a 10% penalty, will be notified of an extra 1.5% penalty each month from then on.
That progressive tax penalty--and a 1999 Moorpark growth-control initiative--caught up with an Irvine firm that had planned construction of a 3,221-home subdivision in the hills north of Moorpark.
Messenger Investment Co., which also owns property as Strathearn Ventura Partners and Hidden Creek Ranch Investors, owes nearly $375,000 in property tax.
That will be paid, said a spokesman for a Newport Beach firm, Village Development, that now manages the Hidden Creek property.
Village Development has proposed a smaller project of 1,500 homes. If approved by the city, the project would be placed on the ballot for voter consideration, spokesman Kim Kilkenny said.
“We’re working with the community doing surveys, trying to get a feel for what the voters of Moorpark want,” he said. “In due course, all tax obligations will be satisfied, regardless.”
The Simi Valley carwash and auto repair business owned by former major league player Lenny Dykstra is also behind on its taxes--about $34,000 this year and about about $100,000 for the two previous years, according to the county.
Matheny said he is not aware of any contact the Dykstra firm has made with his office. “Nothing has been brought to my attention,” he said.
Neither Dykstra nor his business manager could be reached for comment.
Another longtime delinquent owner is the Vineyard Gardens Assn., a group that owns a 62-unit, low-income apartment complex in Oxnard. Vineyard Gardens owes about $49,000 for this year and $63,759 from before, records show.
The owner could not be reached for comment. But a spokeswoman for the Century City company that manages the complex said she thinks the debt is not valid.
“Some of the properties for low-income housing are tax exempt. They have welfare tax exemptions, so I’m sure that’s probably the case with this property,” spokeswoman Michele Brown said.
The largest debtor for this tax year is Houweling Nurseries, a tomato farm owned by a Canadian firm that owes $211,122. Owner Casey Houweling did not return telephone calls.
The second-highest tax debtor is Warner-Elektra-Atlantic Corp. The music company failed to pay $197,910 on a 200,000-square-foot warehouse in Simi Valley, and millions of dollars worth of property inside.
“It’s always amazing to see these [big] companies on the list,” Matheny said. “It’s just probably a lack of management in the financial office.”
Burnham Pacific Properties, the former owner of one of the original shopping centers in Simi Valley, recently sold Mountain Gate Plaza as part of a companywide divestiture. But the San Diego firm still owes about $139,000 on an adjacent shopping center, Matheny said.
“I don’t know anything about these delinquent taxes,” said Michael Rubin, chief operating officer for Burnham Pacific. “We’re in the process of liquidating.”
Burnham Pacific owned 61 shopping centers in five western states, before the company began a liquidation, he said.
Mike Sedell, city manager in Simi Valley, said the buyer of Mountain Gate Plaza has pledged to modernize and rebuild the center, built in the late 1960s.
Next on the debtors’ list are owners of two Oxnard business park complexes and the owner of a construction and self-storage facility in east Ventura.
Other top debtors included GE American Communications, which Matheny said is delinquent on a statewide Board of Equalization assessment of which Ventura County receives a $42,471 portion.
The Texas owner of a store out of which Kmart operates in Santa Paula also failed to pay an April installment, as did homeowners associations in Thousand Oaks and Ventura and the owner of a Santa Paula medical office building.
“We see a lot of sincere, good people who just got tripped up on the complexity of the system,” Matheny said.
