Watson paid pittance for taxes on 'nonexistent' Detroit house

[Chris]

<sup>JoAnn Watson's home on Sturtevant in Detroit. City records show that it is a vacant lot.


Detroit City Councilwoman JoAnn Watson</sup>

Detroit City Councilwoman JoAnn Watson paid only $68 in property taxes this year because city records say her well-kept, brick Tudor-style home doesn't exist. Although the home has occupied its west-side plot since 1926, city records have classified the parcel as an empty lot for the past decade.
 
Watson said she was unaware of the discrepancy until the Free Press contacted her. She said the change came before she was elected to City Council -- and without her involvement.

"I pay the taxes. All I know is I had a big drop when my house got hit hard by a tornado," she said. "We had great damage."

Watson said she could not recall the specific date the tornado hit, saying it might have been 2002, or perhaps 1993.

She acknowledged, however, that she never reported the incident. National Weather Service meteorologists said the last tornadoes to hit Detroit occurred in 1996 and 1997 -- before Watson says her taxes were reduced because of what she called "the natural disaster."

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Another Democrat that thinks its okay to not pay their taxes.

[gcruse]

Great tornado damage and she can't remember within ten years when it happened?
It's a measure of how stupid we have become as a nation that our elected representatives
can lie with such shocking transparency and think they will get away with it.

[Baruch Menachem]

A house like that has a tax bill of $68?  Wow, Detroit must be some real tax haven if she thinks that is normal.  No wonder she thinks her constituents don't pay enough in taxes.  I bet she pays more than that for the weekly visit of the gardener.