Church gets taxed for plot city bought
The kerfuffle over the wealthy homeowners in the city’s Presidio Terrace neighborhood losing their private street after failing to pay property taxes on it may be making big headlines, but those owners certainly aren’t the only ones facing city tax headaches.
The Noe Valley Ministry, a Presbyterian church on Sanchez Street near 23rd, was shocked when it received an anonymous letter in the mail with a newspaper clipping showing it owed back taxes.
And not just a pittance, but a whopping $259,952.10. That’s a lot of dollar bills to toss into the offering plate.
At issue is a quarter-acre plot of land near Sanchez and 24th streets that the ministry owned and used as a parking lot. The church sold the land to the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department in June 2013 for $4.2 million.
The city turned the land into a plaza and rechristened it the Noe Valley Town Square for use as a farmers market and other neighborhood events. But even though city dignitaries cut the ribbon last year, something got lost in translation.
Church treasurer Cindy Cake said she got a property tax bill for the parcel in the fall of 2013 — even though the sender of the bill, the city, now owns the land.
“I went down to the tax collector and I said, ‘We don’t own this anymore.’ They hemmed and hawed,” she said. “The next year we got another bill.”
That time, the church complained directly to John Updike, the city’s director of real estate, Cake said.
“It apparently got taken care of because we didn’t get any more bills after that,” Cake said.
Turns out the bills weren’t being mailed, but they are still racking up. Once a year, the treasurer’s office takes out an ad in a local newspaper with a list of all property owners who’ve been delinquent in paying taxes for at least three years. That’s what someone clipped out and sent anonymously to the church.
“There are people out there who think we’re deadbeats, and I don’t like that,” Cake said.
Amanda Kahn Fried, policy and communications manager for the treasurer’s office, confirmed the ministry does not owe any taxes to the city.
“We are grateful that Noe Valley Ministry brought this error to our attention, and we apologize for any inconvenience or embarrassment this caused,” she said.
Fried said her records show the owner of the parcel now owes $262,547.72. So does the city owe itself ?
Well, no. Updike said city departments don’t pay property taxes on parcels they own.
“There was a delay removing the property from the rolls so we have some zero-sum accounting to accomplish to clean this matter up,” he said. The assessor’s office confirmed the records were finally straightened out Monday afternoon, after several inquiries from yours truly.
It’s only taken four years and three months to get right. Just another day in bureaucracy at City Hall.
In another example of City Hall moving slowly — oh, so slowly — the legislation to erect a statue of Maya Angelou outside the Main Library that was introduced in June has yet to be scheduled for a committee vote.
It likely will be heard in the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee sometime next month before heading to the Board of Supervisors for a vote. Only then can the Arts Commission start selecting a design, artist and exact location for the statue.
As you’ll recall, Supervisor Mark Farrell introduced legislation back in June to make San Francisco the first city to sign on to an international movement to boost women’s representation in the public realm to 30 percent, including public statues.
Just two of San Francisco’s 87 publicly owned statues represent real women: the bust of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a former mayor, at City Hall and Florence Nightingale outside Laguna Honda Hospital.
Farrell’s legislation includes making Angelou, the late writer, the third. The statue is expected to cost $350,000, and the city has offered up to $250,000 in public money over the next two years. Raising $100,000 privately has been slow going, with just $8,000 from 90 people contributed so far.
Margaux Kelly, a legislative aide to Farrell, said she will now seek bigger corporate donations and that she has “no doubt” she’ll reach $100,000 by the end of this year.
The effort got a big boost from Rosie Rios, treasurer of the United States under President Obama, who spoke at a party in support of the Angelou statue last week.
“We value what we see every day, and we see what we value,” Rios told a crowd of mostly women at Swig, a bar near Union Square.
I caught up later with Rios, who was born and raised in Hayward and is now a visiting scholar at Harvard. She has made boosting women’s representation as a way to increase their empowerment her life’s goal.
She’s the one behind the U.S. Treasury Department’s plan to put a portrait of Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. Rios says she’s “extremely hopeful” that will still happen, though current U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said this summer, “We have a lot more important issues to focus on.” Of course he does.
Rios said that in the country’s 10 biggest cities — plus San Francisco and Washington, D.C. — there are just a handful of real-life American women depicted in statues. The nation’s capital has just two: Eleanor Roosevelt at her husband’s monument and Mary McLeod Bethune, an educator and civil rights activist, in a local park.
Central Park in New York City has no real-life women. The New York Life insurance company has pledged $500,000 to get one built depicting Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, both pivotal in securing the right of women to vote.
“This isn’t just about currency. This isn’t just about statues,” Rios said. “It’s about how women, and particularly girls, are valued.”
Farrell said his office also will seek the creation of a new city commission or task force to get more female statues created. His vote for No. 4 after Feinstein, Nightingale and Angelou?
“On a personal level, Susan B. Anthony,” he said. “But we also want to have a local bent here in San Francisco, so we want to let everyone’s voice be heard.”
That’s great, but it’s not happening very quickly. There are a lot of deeppocketed people, companies and foundations in San Francisco. Anybody willing to step forward and sponsor a statue? Anybody?