You may have heard about the decision of the city of New Haven to asses taxes on the vacant scientology “ideal org” building.
For the first time in 14 years, City Hall has sent a property tax bill to the Church of Scientology for a long-vacant former furniture store in Westville Village.
City Tax Collector Karen Gauthier confirmed that, as of July 1, the church owes $39,817.18 in property taxes for the two-story former Hallock’s at 949 Whalley Ave.
That represents the first half of the Church of Scientology of Connecticut Inc.-owned property’s $79,742.36 tax bill for the fiscal year. The second half, as is the case with all local property taxes, is due in January.
It’s long overdue.
And they should be assessing this retroactively.
But this is not going to be a great impediment to scientology, and in fact the city should be wary.
There are two ways this can go. Scientology simply pays the taxes. One “ideal org” donation from a whale will cover $79k. Likely they will use this as a fundraising call no matter what they decide to do.
The other avenue is that scientology fights this and if the city doesn’t fold, they file a lawsuit claiming the city is discriminating against them. This is not an unrealistic alternative. It is actually the start of the whole “ideal org” campaign which was originally called “the Buffalo pattern. ” Buffalo city had sought to use eminent domain on the old Buffalo org premises (which at the time were a tiny, broken down store front with no heating). Scientology sued the city, bringing in high-powered first amendment specialists from NYC. Eventually, the city agreed to settle — and that is what paid for the massive new building that became the first “ideal org.”
I hope the city of New Haven does their homework and knows the beast they are dealing with.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. There are other cities that should follow New Haven’s lead — Philly, Battle Creek, Long Island, St Louis, Albuquerque — that would make it harder for scientology to fight on many fronts.
My money is on scientology using this for a new fundraising drive while they protest the assessment until the city caves or they sue them.
Absolutely 100% agree with Mike.
“The City of New Haven is run by Suppressives who are TERRRIFIED of all the good that an active Scientology Org in their area can do. These government SPs are now trying to prevent Scientology from EVER operating in their area via onerous and unfair taxation. How can an org that isn’t even open yet pay this huge tax bill? Will you help? The time is now and let the fundraising begin!”
Sigh.
This is too cool! For years lots of us on this blog have been yelling “Tax the cult! Tax the cult! Tax the cult!” And now it looks like it’s going to happen!
Will the cult pay? We shall see.
It will be a miracle if the cult doesn’t get it overturned on some technicality. Those judges seem to be on the side of satan himself.
I believe in St. Louis they had to start paying taxes, and also in Philadelphia – after a major battle with the city that included charges for leaving the building derelict. I’m not exactly sure about all the others, but I know there are a number of places where they’ve ended up paying significant annual property tax builds on the vacant buildings. I think New Haven was something of an outlier for their having gotten out out out paying on one of the properties that they’ve let sit and rot for the longest.
What amazes me is that they’re paying significant tax bills for what are probably some of the worst off orgs, stuck with buildings they bought but can’t raise enough money to renovate. It seems likely those orgs are now financially insolvent, and probably need international management to foot the bills for those buildings that are dead weights around their necks.
What Hubbard called the Religion Angle isn’t working anymore.
Scientology thinks they benefit from any reason to have a fundraiser, especially if they can assign the need for money to fighting against some ‘bad guy’ – in this case bigoted and greedy government tax collectors trying to bring down the fastest growing religion on the planet!
Maybe Miscavige benefits from a new fundraiser, since ultimately excess funds accumulate to his personal control, and generally get used only as he dictates. But is Scientology itself benefiting? That is highly doubtful. If they needed use of that property they would have got it up and running long ago. But the don’t need it, because there is no influx of new believers calling out for more space to practice Hubbard’s nonsense.
Better to turn it to a homeless shelter and do some good for the community for a change. Their “exchange” which is so necessary in Scientology, might be the goodwill of the community and of the people they provide with temporary housing. But the LRH design calls for monies to go to the top dog first, then and only then will some few dollars be allowed to trickle down to fund workers’ paychecks and facilities’ expenses.
Scientology has always been a money-making scam, and always will be, unless Miscaviges orders up a wholesale stop to following LRH ‘scripture.’
Not long ago, with another commentator, An Ex, we shared the idea that much of the old internal financial system of SO might have been changed due to major forces (COVID, the web, and consequently a drastic decrease in new people, etc.).
Up until 20 years ago (speaking from my experience at Clo EU), the money from the orgs (and other smaller entities like SMI, Wise, etc.) barely covered the minimum needs for some pay in Dkr and the basics. This was 20 years ago, and then many of the orgs further shrank until the lockdown, from which they have not recovered.
During this period (during and after COVID), some reports received from Clo EU mentioned increased pay and other benefits that could NOT be consistent with the economic scene at the time (zero cash flow from orgs and satellite entities). Unless Clo was somehow incorporated into the “mother church” and received subsistence directly from Int.
This could have been another way to survive and simultaneously ‘justify’ all that money to certain government entities, thereby happily deceiving whoever they wanted.
I genuinelly invite anyone reading this comment who may have information to share it. Thank you.
I’ve been following this mess for a while now. In quick summary, New Haven went throught this before. The property tax law there states the location must be in actual use for religious services to be tax exempt. After the originally purchased the building, nothing went on there, so New Haven sent them tax bills that went unpaird for years. The city took $cientology to court to seize the building for the unpaid taxes. Rather than drag the case out for years, there was a last minute settlement for pennies on the dollar. Then sham “services” started being held once a week or so to justify the exemption.
The sham lasteded long enough for the mess to be forgotten, then things went back to no services and no progress with the building. At some point it was noticed nothing had been going on at, or with, the building again for years, and brought it to the the city’s attention. Which kicked off this latest round of removing the property tax exemption and billing $cientology for the property taxes. It remains to be seen whether the cycle of sending bills for years before taking further action repeats itself. Or if the city will act faster because of the previous attempt to blow smoke in it’s eyes with those sham services.
Thank you for this additional info!
Sounds so very scientological…