Stu Bykofsky: These taxes are out of whack
I'M STANDING in front of 1422 Ridge Ave., which sold for $839,000 on Jan. 17, 2005, according to the Web site of the Board of Revision of Taxes.
I'M STANDING in front of 1422 Ridge Ave., which sold for $839,000 on Jan. 17, 2005, according to the Web site of the Board of Revision of Taxes.
The lot doesn't look like it's worth $839,000. It's vacant, on a bulldozed block. The Opa 2 pizzeria and deli across the street is padlocked.
A few steps away is 1416 Ridge, which also sold for $839,000 in January 2005. As did 1426 Ridge, same day and same amount.
These parcels are on a triangular sliver of gravel-covered and weed-grown land, bounded by Ridge, Fairmount and 15th. In the 1400 block of Fairmount, seven properties also sold for $839,000 each on 1/17/05.
At Prince's Fairmount 1500 Lounge across the street, the bartender doesn't know what the parcel will become, but says neighborhood prices are rising.
To the point where the 10 small vacant lots I mentioned are worth $8.3 million to the purchaser - the nearby Greater Exodus Baptist Church?
No, those figures are wrong, Ola O. Solanke says. Greater Exodus' the Rev. Herb Lusk tells me the church paid about $839,000 total for the properties. The BRT Web site is wrong. And if those figures were used in establishing value, BRT seriously overvalued the neighborhood.
Those figures were not used, says BRT director of assessments Eugene Davey. The figures are coded so BRT knows they were "blanket" sales.
What about misinformation on the Web site, which is where citizens go for valid information? "I'm not the Website guy," he says good-naturedly.
The actual price of these properties on Ridge and Fairmount Avenues became an issue nearby.
The Nigerian-born, Temple-educated Solanke, a married father of four who's been an American citizen since 1994, was stunned last year when taxes on his own Francisville properties headed for the moon. That's why he doubts that the BRT somehow adjusts for "blanket" sales.
Yes, the long-wrecked Francisville - with its abandoned buildings, vacant lots, small businesses and homes - is headed in the right direction, but it's not Society Hill. Solanke's eyes popped when his tax bill on 1514 Parrish St. jumped from $66 to $1,983 a year; 818 N. 16th bounced from $79 to $1,983.36, and 1533 Ridge skyrocketed from $116.36 to $3,522.45 - a hike of more than 3,000 percent.
When Solanke asked why, the BRT's Victor Palenske said that land in the 15th Ward was reassessed at $30 a square foot, adding that Solanke's properties had long been underassessed. (In Philadelphia, as policy, almost everyone is underassessed.) Davey calls the hikes "generally reasonable." That may be generally true, but would you call a 3,000 percent tax hike reasonable?
Solanke, a founder of the Francisville Neighborhood Development Corp., says that while Francisville is in the 15th Ward, so are more-affluent Spring Garden and Fairmount. Averaging those dissimilar communities is unfair and resulted in his mammoth hikes, he says.
Solanke contested the increases last year, but to avoid a hearing he accepted a BRT offer to cut his hikes in half, kind of like "Let's Make a Deal."
He didn't realize that it was a one-year deal and that the BRT could hike his taxes the next year, which it did.
That time, he took the hearing. He pulled material from the BRT Web site - such as the church's purchases - and cross-referenced it against deeds, indicating a lack of data integrity.
His appeal was turned down.
"What anyone wants out of the system is integrity, some methodology that you say, 'Yeah, that makes sense,' " which this doesn't, says Brett Mandel, leader of Philadelphia Forward, a nonprofit that seeks tax fairness.
Earlier this year, Mandel successfully fought his own residential tax hike on the grounds of lack of uniformity. Late last year, I wrote a column saying I wouldn't appeal my tax increase, figuring it was small and I was doing the city a favor. I now think I shouldn't have gone along with a flawed system that taxes unfairly.
The methodology is questionable, fairness is lacking and Solanke, who's trying to help rebuild a neighborhood, is punished by taxes that are out of whack.
E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns: