from Our Witness Neighbors: Taxes Not Paid by Witnesses Cost City $10 Million a Year
Brookly Heights Press, June 1, 1995
© 1995 by Werner Cohn
http://www.wernercohn.com/Jehovah%27sWitnesses1995.html
At one time, about twenty years ago, a local florist on Montague Street expressed his displeasure by placing a sign in his shop window :
The Jehovah's Witnesses ... embark upon a program of using their tax-free millions to swallow up building after building until they own a major portion of the Heights ... and contribute nothing to the life of the community except for destroying lovely old brownstone houses and erecting ugly, modern structures.
The map of thirty-six properties listed in the name of the Watchtower Bible & Tract Society in the Heights derives from city records, which, I was told, may be incomplete. The city estimates the current total market value of the Witness properties that are shown here at over 190 million dollars. A very small proportion of this property is taxed, most of it is wholly exempt. If all of this property were on the tax rolls, the city would receive an additional $9,427,051 per year. But this figure is based on current assessments, which, in the case of totally exempt buildings, are generally out of date. For that reason one can estimate that the city loses well more than ten million dollars a year as a result of Witness real estate holdings in Brooklyn Heights. This sum amounts to an indirect subsidy paid to the Witnesses by the tax payers of the city.
"Money walks through the door, and memory flies out the window" Dream Theater, 6:00