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A New Britain tax judge has granted the town additional time to produce and review extensive amounts of material sought by Tariq and Kamran Farid, owners of Edible Arrangements International, in connection with their Branford Islamic Academy tax case.
In seeking a 30-day delay, Carolyn W. Kone, the town attorney handling the case, cited the Farids’ request to produce information about every property in Branford that received a full or partial tax exemption over the past five years.
Kone said the plaintiffs (three groups in all, including SKF Stony Creek, LLC, Shoreline Islamic Academy, Inc. and Tariq Farid & Kamran Farid, Trustees of the Farid Foundation) had served “extensive interrogatories (25), many of which have numerous sub-parts (including one that has 10 sub-parts) and requests for production (13) along with 14 instructions.”
Kone said in her motion that the discovery (information requested or demanded as part of a civil lawsuit) “asks for far-ranging information,” including not only five years’ worth of full or partial tax exempt properties in Branford, but “the purpose of the organization granted the exemption, a detailed description of the land and improvements on each such property, including the total acres, total square footage of improvements and the size and type of all buildings and improvements.”
She also argued that if the tax case is resolved at a pretrial conference, there would be no need for the extensive information requests.
New Britain Judge Arnold W. Aronson granted the town’s motion for additional time on Aug. 1, roughly two weeks after the town won its motion to transfer the complex tax case from New Haven Superior Court to the state’s specialized tax court in New Britain. At issue is the ownership, tenancy and tax-exemption status of the school.
In another development, Kone filed another motion this week in New Britain Superior Court seeking to dismiss the tax case on the grounds that the brothers, as Trustees of the Farid Foundation, lack standing because they did not own the property when the tax appeal began and because “contrary to their assertions….they have never paid any taxes levied on the property.” The Farid brothers oppose dismissing the case.
The town’s tax collector, Joanne Cleary submitted an affidavit saying that her records indicate that neither of the brothers nor the Farid Foundation “ever made any payments for taxes owing for 56 Stony Creek Road.”
Town records show the brothers and their foundation quit-claimed the Branford school property on July 24, 2012, to SKF Stony Creek, LLC, a company they own, with the same address in Wallingford as the corporate headquarters of Edible Arrangements. Kone says SKF Stony Creek has no tax exemption status.
The town has valued the 2.76-acre school property at $1.8 million and assessed the property at $1.2 million. Barbara Neal, the town’s tax assessor, determined that the Farid brothers must pay taxes on the property because it was not tax-exempt after July 24, 2012 when the quit claim was filed. Branford began levying taxes on the property after that date. The brothers appealed. It is this tax case that landed in court.
The brothers’ attorney, Jennifer Rignoli of the law firm of Parrett, Porto, Parese & Colwell in Hamden, sought the comparative non-profit tax information after Neal denied them tax-exemption status after July 24, 2012. The brothers purchased the former Pine Brook/Wightwood Elementary School in 2010. Pine Brook is located at 56 Stony Creek Rd.
Although the Farids did not open an Islamic Academy in Branford, they did open one in Guilford. The Guilford school received non-profit status in 2011.
While a school did not emerge in Branford, religious services were held in the building at one time. The school has now fallen into disrepair and is up for sale. In recent years, the school was damaged in two separate broken sprinkler system incidents, one in 2010 and another in February, 2011. Earlier this year, on January 31, 2014, the town declared the building structurally unsafe for human use.
Both sides were required by Aug. 6 to submit to New Britain Superior Court Judge George Levine a list of the dates they will be able to attend a pre-trial conference in the fall.
Gathering the data for these requests is a costly and time-consuming undertaking, Kone noted. If a settlement occurs, “the requests will not be required, thereby saving the municipal defendant time and resources that would otherwise be expended responding to plaintiffs’ discovery requests.”
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