Report highlights BRT's tax-exempt assessment problems

For the last 20 years, the city's property-assessment agency has listed the building at 5901 Woodbine Ave. as a Jewish nonprofit day-care center. Since it was a religious institution, the tax bill was zero.

But unnoticed by the Board of Revision of Taxes, the day-care center moved out a decade ago.

Since then, the new owners - for-profit real estate investors - have been collecting rent from new tenants, and should have been paying taxes of $10,000 a year, according to a new audit released yesterday by the City Controller's Office.

The city has now changed its records and issued a tax bill going back to 1999: $207,689, counting interest and penalties.

The report criticizes the BRT for "ineptness," and the owners for trying to take advantage of the mistake.

"It appears that the longer the property remained wrongly classified by the BRT, the more confident the owners felt that they could get away with not paying their taxes," said Controller Alan Butkovitz.

Ellen Amudipe, who owns the building with her husband, said she thought she had been paying taxes through the mortgage company.

She said she was "dumbfounded" when the letters arrived from the city Revenue Department.

"How could this go on and on and no one say anything to me?" Amudipe said in an interview yesterday. "I do feel like I'm the victim here."

While the controller's report focused on the Amudipe buildings, tax-free properties could be a larger problem for the BRT. The beleaguered city agency has been under intense scrutiny in recent months after an Inquirer report found wholesale mismanagement and widespread errors in assessments.

There are about 4,000 tax-exempt properties in the BRT's records, including churches, schools, and charities.

But BRT records show that hundreds of them - like the Woodbine building - have not been reassessed since 1989. That means the BRT might be missing buildings that have been converted into businesses - and should be paying taxes.

That could be a problem for the property owners, too, said Deputy City Controller Harvey M. Rice.

"Just because you are not notified of your taxes does not absolve you of paying your taxes," Rice said, adding that his office is now considering a broader review of tax-exempt properties.

Russell M. Nigro, a BRT board member, said the agency would try to determine how the error was made. Barry Mescolotto, the BRT's acting chief assessor, did not return a request for comment.

Ellen and Oluwole Amudipe bought the property in 1999 from a nonprofit, Federation Day Care Services. The BRT still listed the federation as the owners until the Controller's Office found the mistake earlier this year.

The BRT is supposed to track changes in deeds, but the agency apparently missed the sale of 5901 Woodbine Ave. because it listed the property at a different address.

For most of the last eight years, the 1.4-acre site has been the home of charter schools: Laboratory Charter School of Communication and Languages, for kindergarten and first-grade students, and Ad Prima, an elementary school with 186 students that opened in 2005. Ad Prima moved to a building on Frankford Avenue this summer.

The schools are operated by Dorothy June Brown, whose Agora Cyber Charter, in Devon, is now part of a widening federal investigation involving local charter schools. The auditor's report on the back taxes is unrelated to the federal probe.

Ellen Amudipe, who owns several properties with her husband, has been hit with liens before for unpaid bills, court records show. She says she has always made arrangements to pay her debts.

Amudipe said she went to the city Revenue Department and said she would make a payment plan if she really did owe 10 years of back taxes. An employee said he would check into the matter but never called her back, she said.

"It seems almost ridiculous for them to lash out at us," she said. "I feel like it's a slap to my good name."