Inquirer staff writer Sam Wood reports:
Just one day before Philadelphia is to close 11 library branches, Alan Butkovitz, the City Controller, will release a budget analysis that he says could reduce the city’s five-year $1 billion deficit by $413 million.
The analysis looks at potential cost savings and will recommend methods of generating new revenues for the city.
Among his recommendations, Butkovitz says the city’s Emergency Medical Services must improve their collection rates. The city EMS only collects 40% of money it’s owed. Other cities have a collection rates that approach 70%, a spokesman said.
Butkovitz will hold a press conference this morning at 11 a.m. in his office at the Municipal Service Building where he will reveal additional findings.
No doubt Mayor Nutter's staff will be interested to see his findings.
Read more breaking news in our From The Source blog.
After reading this guy's SEPTA crime report, I am pretty sure he has no credibility.— bobcitydoc
Comment removed.
Don't forget the uncollected property taxes that are in hundreds of millions as reported in hallwatch.org. Then there are uncollected water and PGW bills. If people can not pay their real estate taxes, or afford to heat their homes and can not afford water, what are they doing in the city? These accumulated arrears from good economic times are structural problems of supporting an impoverished class of the citizenry that only seems to grow in numbers.- Here's an idea.. ALL workers in city hall...a 10% reduction in wages. That's members of council,, the people who work for the council members..ALL staff of the mayor.EVERYONE TAKES A HIT..
- Wait until Fumo is convicted and then take the millions of $$ PECO gave to Citizen's Alliance and spread it around the city. You can keep the libraries open with 10+million dollars from PECO.— Chr
- Novel idea...collect whats owed to you...how about the city collect whats owed to them from the stinking eagles...roughly $10M. Not to mention what the corrupt PPA owes them. between the two of them, that would probably bring the deficit to only $500M.— g$ is an idiot
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- I'll bet Nutter Butter would not have a problem finding money for an Eagles parade now would he. Think back when did he first announce the troubles... how about the Monday after the Phils parade.— eaglegreen
- The mayor well aware of what Fernando08 is talking about. The city is owed $522 million in overdue property taxes, and that didn't just happen when we had a financial crisis. It's city policy for over a decade not to collect property taxes, and to let owners of valuable properties slide. This is the city's own data from the Department of Revenue, a result of a lawsuit to get that info sent regularly to a city hall citizen journalist and advocate who runs the website "hallwatch.org" -- why is the paper so reluctant to get into this? Why is it taboo for pols to talk about, and verboten for journalists to ask, why the city has mismanaged the collection and foreclosure of half a billion in property tax debt? Here's the data, see for yourself: http://www.hallwatch.org/proptax/about/redelinq/stats/summary— CleanupPhilly
- I'd like to give Nutter a chance, but he's had a year. He personally told me that he'd start collecting overdue property taxes at a higher rate than Street did, which has not been true. Street started collection proceedings on 23,000 properties his last year in office, helping to create the surplus he left. And Nutter's first response is to cut services to people who don't vote - the kids. Then life/limb services. No, people. That's gross mismanagement when you have half a billion sitting right there, but for going to get it like any normal municipal government. We can't afford whole zip codes where half of all owners are allowed to contribute NOTHING to the cost of their footprint. See for yourselves: http://www.hallwatch.org/proptax/about/redelinq/stats/delinqbyzip/index_html?skey=pcent&rkey=pcent— CleanupPhilly
- There's a LOT the city does wrong about property tax collection, trying to protect an individual's vote in exchange for getting critical revenue. The city (by judicial order from Darnell Jones and Keogh) lets people stop a sheriff sale on an empty property using the "Cert. of Residential Occupancy" if the house is just in probate, which people can claim without finishing for any amount of time. There is a house on my block that has been "in probate" for 15 years because the city lets the property taxes accumulate without sending it to sheriff sale for collection. Meanwhile, as this property doesn't pay, and falls apart, and is uninhabitable, the city raises my property taxes (and yours). This is simple to fix -- undo the judicial order that allows sheriff sales to be stopped for properties in probate for more than a year. Simple fix. Would get tens of millions for the city almost overnight as people realize they have to pay or sell.— CleanupPhilly
- PPA has been a steady revenue source, but it doesn't work in the whole city. There can't be these arbitrary stopping points where PPA doesn't go. It has to go to Washington Ave., and wow, even below that. It has to work the whole city without interference. As large as what PPA contributes is, it's still just a small fraction of what the city gets when it goes after overdue property taxes.— CleanupPhilly
- How badly run are the sheriff sales to collect overdue property taxes in the city? The Tax Lien sale for the month of December, 2008 was NEVER posted on the sheriff's sale website, www.phillysheriff.com. I'm not even sure it happened. The Tax Delinquency sales are never posted online. Only the Tax Collection sale was posted online this month, and there were only 100 properties on it, like there is a cut off of only selling 100 properties per month. But there are 130,000 properties that owe the city taxes. If you only sell something like 150 properties a month for back taxes, how long do you think it will take to catch up on the backlog (if no new properties are added?) 130,000/1800 = 72 years. That's what's known as, when you are closing libraries for poor kids, GROSS MISMANAGEMENT. HELLO, idiots. Collect. Foreclose. Chop, chop. Start with the empty properties, and take it from there. It's time.— CleanupPhilly
- I think the Sheriff is just too political to do the job of managing collections effectively. I think a sheriff's deputy has to be at the sales, but that the whole process has to be contracted out to a private contractor that doesn't answer to a political machine. It's completely subjugated to people making calls to stop this process. Case in point, 2307 St. Alban's owes thousands in back taxes, water bills, gas liens, nuisance fines, is uninhabitable, and has been in probate for years, but the local political street walker "makes calls" to keep it out of sheriff sale for collection of back taxes. This guy thinks he's a kingmaker, but he and his ilk are cheating the schools and libraries of critical revenue and raising taxes on those who do pay. What does the Democratic ward leader say? No problem. Whatever you want. Let's not let this go to sheriff sale. I'll make some calls. This is just one of many examples I see all the time as I'm trying to help people clean up the neighborhood, there are these properties that are blighted that some clown labors to block selling off, and the city lets him because he works the polls. This has got to end. The city cannot afford to try to confer favors on its volunteer labor force by giving them VIP status and then try to compensate by closing libraries. This should be made explicitly illegal under state law, because it corrupts fair collection, and just application of the law. That's why there are whole zip codes where half of all people are not paying, but others where the debt is in the single digits. Corruption. Corruption in property tax collection costs the city hundreds of millions. And even the PRESS won't touch it.— CleanupPhilly
- The property tax system in this city is screwed up. Aside from the fact that taxes are not collected, buildings are unfairly assessed all over the place. Take, for example, the 1000 block of N Lawrence Street in Northern Liberties. There are 3 600 square foot properties at 1025 N Lawrence Street (trinities) which are paying almost $1200 per year in taxes, yet there are many properties on the same block which are more than twice the size that are paying less (ex: 1003 N Lawrence St, 1300 square feet, $1000). Further, the assessment for square foot are all over the place. 1025 is assessed at almost $24 per square foot, but State Representative Thomas W Curtis who lives across the street at 1022 is assessed at $8.69 per square foot. See for yourself: http://www.hallwatch.org/proptax/search/address/tr/current?addr%3Alist=1000-1099+n+lawrence&evenodd= This is public record. This city is corrupt beyond belief. I'm not surprised the politician on the block has among the lowest assessments. Only 4 houses out of almost 40 are assessed at a lower rate.— 3rd&Brown
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