15993: (Hermantin) Sun Sentinel-Break on taxes to cost advocate (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Break on taxes to cost advocate

By Leon Fooksman
Staff Writer
Posted June 21 2003

DELRAY BEACH· After fending off criticism of nepotism this week, the
director of a group that aids Haitians now owes $1,000 for a tax exemption
the county says she improperly claimed.

Daniella Henry, director of the Haitian American Community Council, will be
required to pay the money, with interest, to Palm Beach County for claiming
a $25,000 homestead exemption for a house on Udell Lane in Delray Beach that
wasn't her primary residence, said Dorothy Ewing, director of taxpayer
services for the county property appraiser's office. Henry's primary
residence as of January was a home on Diane Drive in Boynton Beach, which
also has a $25,000 exemption, Ewing said.

A homeowner can claim a homestead exemption for only one property. The
county will remove the exemption on the Udell Lane property and require
Henry to pay back taxes, Ewing said.

Henry denied doing anything wrong, saying the county made a clerical mistake
because she removed the exemption on the Udell Lane property two years ago.

"It's their fault. They need to go back to their records and find it," Henry
said.

Ewing said there's no record of her filling out a form to end the exemption.

"She may have come in, had a conversation and our clerk could have
misunderstood," Ewing said. But "we don't show a record of her withdrawing
it."

Records show that Henry owns two other properties in Palm Beach County: 1466
S. Congress Ave. in West Palm Beach and 719 W. Chatelaine Blvd. in Delray
Beach.

Ownership studied

Her co-ownership of 1466 S. Congress Ave. with Gethro Louis Jean, a former
supervisor at the Haitian council who was recently dismissed for failing to
keep proper documentation, was scrutinized in a critical report this week by
the Children's Services Council of Palm Beach County. The agency grants
Henry's group $145,705 a year in public money to provide social services to
Haitians in the Lake Worth area.

By co-owning the property, Henry and Louis Jean have created the appearance
of a "nepotistic relationship" that might violate a Children's Services
Council nepotism policy, the agency determined. Employees of Children's
Services Council-funded agencies are discouraged from sharing a home with
their supervisors, the agency said.

Henry's West Palm Beach property also has a homestead exemption, but that
isn't a problem, Ewing said. That's because the exemption is listed under
the former owner, Helen Jacques, who sold the property to Henry and Louis
Jean in February. Even though the exemption is listed to Jacques, Henry and
Louis Jean are receiving a tax break for the rest of the year, Ewing said.
Next year, Henry and Louis Jean will have to apply for it under their names
if they want the exemption.

Following the agency's scrutiny, Henry said she would attempt to remove her
name from the property's deed.

Taxes owed

Henry must pay back taxes for the two years that she had the Udell Lane
property exempted, Ewing said. The property, assessed at $70,939, has a
taxable value of $45,939 after the homestead exemption, records show. That
equals about $500 a year in tax breaks, Ewing said. Henry had co-owned the
property with her ex-husband, Joel Deneus. He transferred his share of the
property to Henry after the divorce.

Henry said Deneus handles the mortgage and tax bills on the property so she
had no idea the Udell Lane property was still exempted.

But property records show that the property's tax bills are sent to Henry's
West Chatelaine Boulevard property, which doesn't have a homestead
exemption, records show. Henry said her brother has lived at the property
until April or May, when she rented it to a tenant. Henry doesn't have a
landlord license for the property, city officials said.

All property owners with homestead exemptions are supposed to receive three
notices a year from the county about the status of their exemption, Ewing
said. One is a card requiring owners to update the county if they have sold
or rented their property. The other two are part of the property tax bills.

Ewing said she isn't sure how county officials didn't realize that Henry had
two exemptions. But she said Henry should have notified them.

"The onus is on the owner to tell us," Ewing said.

Leon Fooksman can be reached at lfooksman@sun-sentinel.com.





Copyright © 2003, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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