Tax Burden: Fillmore Auditorium was paying a lot more than other music venues until the city received a complaint.
The 2015 taxes for two of Colfax Avenue’s main music venues increased significantly after a complaint that the Fillmore Auditorium was paying 10 to 15 times the taxes of the Ogden and Bluebird theaters.
An anonymous tipster filed a complaint in July 2014 saying the Fillmore paid about $150,000 a year while Ogden paid $15,000 and Bluebird $9,000. The city’s tax office said the actual taxes that year were $135,556, $15,456 and $9,971, respectively.
The current taxes for the Ogden went up to $35,141 and the Bluebird to nearly $13,999 while Fillmore’s taxes increased slightly to $140,410, property records show.
Tax Troubles: Taxes on the Ogden Theater doubled after a tipster told the city the venue didn’t pay as much as a neighboring theater.
The complainant was suspicious there was corruption in the Denver Assessor’s Office.
“The head of the property tax office said there was something wrong,” the tipster told a representative of the city’s tip fraud line in a complaint obtained by Watchdog.org. “The 4th sentence (the assessor’s staffer) said to me is ‘I want you to know no one takes bribes here.’”
The city’s investigator dismissed any corruption allegations, but the assessor still sent appraisers to all three venues, the complaint shows.
“While there is no indication of any fraud and the assessed property taxes as measured by per square foot is reasonable between the three venues, the Assessor’s Office has committed to sending an appraiser to all three locations for a reappraisal during the next cycle,” the notes in the file say.
But before the complaint was filed, the Fillmore, which is nearly 53,000 square feet, paid about $2.56 a square foot while the Ogden, at 14,000 square feet, was paying less than half that at $1.10 and Bluebird, at 4,900 square feet, was paying about 20 percent less at $2.03 per square foot.
In the 2015 tax cycle, Fillmore’s tax per square foot went to $2.65 while Ogden’s increased to $2.51 and Bluebird’s to $2.85.
Denver Assessor Keith Erffmeyer said the assessor’s office was under the impression the Fillmore had recently been remodeled and the other two venues were in poor condition.
But he welcomed the information from the tipster and sent out an appraiser to make sure each venue was paying its fair share.
“Looking at it with a new set of eyes, we determined they weren’t in as bad of shape as we thought,” he said.
The caller also told fraud line workers he tried to report the issue to the head of the assessor’s office a few months before calling the fraud line, but he refused to take the complaint, the report says.
Erffmeyer said he never talked to the complainant until after the fraud line referral and couldn’t surmise why one of his employees brought up bribes unless the caller specifically accused the staffer of corruption.
“The charge of the assessor’s office is to be fair,” he said.
The tipster alleged the ownership of the theaters was responsible for the disparity, but property records show the promoter the tipster names doesn’t own the properties in question.
Messages or emails left for the owners of the venues were not returned.
By Arthur Kane | January 20, 2016
Arthur is the bureau chief for Colorado Watchdog. He has several years of experience in the TV industry, working as an executive producer and investigative producer for KMGH-TV in Denver, Colorado. Arthur was an editor and reporter for the Denver Post for 7 years. He has also worked with the Des Moines Register, Daily Herald and the City News Bureau. He has won several national awards for his investigative work, including two duPont Columbia awards, a Peabody award, a national Emmy and has been a finalist for the Investigative Reporters and Editors award several times. Arthur can be reached on Twitter at @ArthurMKane or by email at akane@watchdog.org.
http://watchdog.org/254209/taxes-two-denver-music-venues-rise-complaint/