Juli Van Der Meulen, a candidate for Margate City Commission, was combing through public records when she says something stood out about her political challenger: Something was amiss with her competitor’s property tax bill.
The Broward County Property Appraiser’s Office says it made a mistake that dates back in 2009, when a former employee wrongly noted that Margate Commissioner Anthony Caggiano’s house was a tenth of its actual size: 190 square feet, instead of 1,900 square feet.
The 15-year-old mistake led to the house being taxed far less over the years: Each year afterward, the bill was for hundreds of dollars, instead of thousands of dollars, appraiser’s records show. The home’s tax bill, which was about $2,800 in 2008, then dropped to around the $600 range in the following years, the records show.
But after Van Der Meulen spotted the error, change is afoot: Caggiano’s original tax bill for this year, which was anticipated to be about $668, now will be more than triple that: The new amount will now be about $2,310 for this year, the property appraiser’s office said.
Van Der Meulen, a business owner who works as an executive recruiter, flagged Caggiano’s property-tax bill to the South Florida Sun Sentinel. She said she considered it unfair that Caggiano is an elected official — where he authorizes city spending, with money generated by tax dollars — but he has not faced paying what would’ve been the actual property-tax amount.
“You don’t go from $3,000 to $600. One doesn’t go from $3,000 to less than $1,000 when the assessed value keeps going up,” Van Der Meulen said. “How does a man with an economics degree who has been sitting on my dais dealing with tax issues not know?”
Broward property appraiser’s records show Caggiano and his wife bought the house in 2003.
Caggiano, now retired as an energy efficiency consultant, said he had no idea about the incorrect property taxes because those monies are wrapped up in his monthly mortgage payment and paid by the mortgage company. He said that’s been handled by his wife, including reading the annual statement of property taxes, while he has handled their remaining household expenses.
“It was my understanding that my taxes have always been paid,” said Caggiano, who was elected to the City Commission in 2016 and reelected in 2020. “I have always paid my taxes and will always pay my taxes, it’s just that simple.”
Even though the appraiser’s office caught the mistake in 2012 after a site inspection, the assessed value of the home was not adjusted to reflect the corrected square footage, so the problem lingered.
Broward County Property Appraiser Marty Kiar said the office’s error in 2009 could not happen today because the technology has been upgraded. Instead of information being manually added by a worker, a computer now automates information to create proper figures, he said. To be proactive, his office is running a random check of that former employee’s work, and other workers for clerical errors, to check if other property owners also weren’t billed with correct amounts.
That random search, which hasn’t yielded any other errors, is ongoing.
Because it was the Property Appraiser’s Office’s error, Caggiano wouldn’t have to pay an additional money in property taxes for the prior years, Kiar said. (There is Florida Supreme Court legal precedent that a property appraiser cannot back assess a property when a clerical error resulted in a lower assessment than was required, Kiar said.)
For this November’s election, Caggiano has two challengers for Seat 1: Van Der Meulen and Nina Culver.
Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sunsentinel.com. Follow on X, formerly Twitter, @LisaHuriash
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