Firms Linked to Harbor Official Owe $267,000 in Property Taxes

Companies linked to Los Angeles Harbor Commissioner James Acevedo owe $267,000 in delinquent property taxes and penalties on half a dozen apartment buildings and vacant lots, according to records and interviews.

Acevedo is a partner in the for-profit Foothill Family Housing and president of Neighborhood Empowerment and Economic Development Inc., known as NEED, a nonprofit group that has received more than $10 million in city loans in the last decade.

Mark Ryavec, a spokesman for Acevedo, said some of the tax delinquencies result from a failure by partnership employees to file for proper exemptions for affordable-housing projects and that additional paperwork has since been submitted to greatly reduce the tax liability. “The taxes will get paid,” Ryavec said.The Times recently reported that Foothill Housing and a partnership involving NEED had missed deadlines last month to repay the city $4.1 million in loans used to buy land in the San Fernando Valley for two housing projects that were not built.

City officials said the partnerships notified them Monday that they had entered agreements to sell two vacant parcels intended for housing and that the $4.1 million in loans and interest for the failed projects would be repaid from the proceeds.

“It appears there is enough money to repay the city, with interest,” said Mercedes Marquez, general manager of the city Housing Department, which made the loans. Marquez said she believed the sale of the two properties also would allow the Acevedo partnerships to resolve any tax liabilities.

One of the Foothill Housing properties slated for sale, near the corner of Pierce Street and Foothill Boulevard in Pacoima, is $18,322 in arrears on property taxes from 2002.

The biggest delinquency, $126,084, is owed for the Library Village Apartments, a nine-unit apartment building in Lake View Terrace. It was built by a partnership including NEED and the developer American Housing, and was partly financed by a city loan of $3.2 million.

Ryavec, interim executive director of NEED, said American Housing was supposed to take care of paying all property taxes owed by the partnership on Library Village. “We were recently informed by them that their staff had not paid attention to the taxes owed,” he said.

A spokesman for American Housing did not return calls Monday for a comment.

NEED is part of a partnership that owns another city-funded parcel on Foothill Boulevard in Lake View Terrace and owes $45,000 in taxes dating to 2000, county records show.

In addition, $33,000 in delinquent taxes are owed by a NEED partnership for property on Orion Avenue in North Hills that is slated for auction in August. Ryavec said he was confident the property would be saved.

“The previous executive director did not pay some property taxes because he thought the assessor was incorrect,” Ryavec said. Steps were being taken to pay down some delinquencies, he said, but he could not estimate how much was owed.