March 18th, 2010

The Philadelphia Inquirer Reports:

Should the city raise property taxes despite widespread agreement that the assessment system is broken?

During a daylong hearing on the city’s $3.87 billion budget that was packed with protesters, several City Council members suggested higher property taxes as a better solution to the city’s financial woes than Mayor Nutter’s proposed levies on garbage collection and sugared beverages.

Next week, Councilman Frank DiCicco said, he plans to introduce legislation that would temporarily raise the property tax by 12 percent, the first such increase in at least a decade.

Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr. asked Budget Director Steve Agostini whether a 10 percent property-tax increase would be more fair than the $300 trash-collection fee Nutter was backing.

Agostini answered that a higher property tax could raise the $107 million the city was projecting to get from the garbage fee. But he said he believed the increase would have to be 12 percent or 13 percent.

The Nutter administration also is worried that a property-tax hike could be a tough sell because of widely acknowledged problems at the Board of Revision of Taxes, which oversees assessments. Those problems led Nutter in January to declare a moratorium on new property assessments until the city believed the data were reliable.

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