Mayor Nutter’s pick to run the embattled Board of Revision of Taxes said today that he could not “in good conscience” continue to value properties in Philadelphia using the “bad data” the department relies on.
He said there would be an immediate moratorium on all reassessments until each and every parcel of land in the city can be assessed anew.
“It became obvious that we could not continue to do assessments in the way we’ve done them in the past,” said BRT Executive Director Richard Negrin, who has been on the job for just over a month. “I was seeing more than enough to give me pause about continuing business as usual at the BRT.”
Negrin’s conclusions were seconded by Mayor Nutter at a City Hall press conference early this afternoon.
"It is the only fair thing to do," Nutter said.
The moratorium, which will not apply to new buildings and rehab properties, will have the effect of freezing property taxes at their current levels through at least the 2011 tax year, unless City Council takes the unanticipated step of raising property tax rates.
The 18,000 city properties that received reassessment notices in 2009 are not covered by the moratorium. When pressed to explain why it was acceptable to let those property owners cope with new assessments and unacceptable for new assessments to be issued in 2010, Negrin replied, “you’ve got to draw a line somewhere, and I’m drawing a line where I walked in the door.”
Over the next two years — and possibly longer — Negrin said the city’s assessors would clean up the inaccurate data that forms the basis for determining property values.
Negrin said the city was too frequently wrong about essentials such as lot size and how many stories a home might have. On some occasions, he said, the agency was incorrectly incoporating unusual sales — such as a father selling a home to his son for $1 — into their assessment models, which would throw off values for similar homes in the area. In another instance, Negrin said, a home was miscoded into the wrong neighborhood, again skewing values.
Similar errors have been chronicled in Inquirer reports over the past two years that documented widespread flaws in the BRT’s assessment system as well as mismanagement and possibly cronyism at the patronage-laden agency.
Last fall, the Nutter administration assumed day-to-day control of the assessment function of the formerly indepedent BRT through an agreement with the agency’s BRT. This spring, voters will be asked during the primary election to abolish the BRT altogether, replacing the agency permanently with two new entities.
Contact Inquirer staff writer Patrick Kerkstra at 215-854-2827 or pkerkstra@phillynews.com
There is no need to stop reassessments. The city is going to have to do this, and you can't violate state law, the state constitution in fact, for TWO YEARS while you try to fix this in one fell swoop.— CleanupPhilly- Imagine the paper just putting a "moratorium" on fixing the bills it bills its customers. No. If there was a problem in the raw billing data that meant 20% or so of the bills were based on bad data, and the rest of the bills then had to be adjusted to real prices, what would the paper do? Freeze fixing for two years? The paper would progressively fix it every day, and send out as many correct bills every day as it could until the problem was fixed. This is a bogus delay tactic and it violates Nutter's mandate, and it hurts his credibility.— CleanupPhilly
- Here Clean Up is exactly right. This delay has more to do with Nutter's fear about his political future, and less to do with what is strategically and fiscally appropriate and critical to this city. So he failed to appeal the FOP, and the costs are in excess of 25 million a year, and he fails to aggressively fix this system and places this moratorium for two years, assuring he won't incur the anger of some irrational folks who get ticked off when the adjustment has them paying more, but which also ensures no additional revenue during that period. It's obscene, and Cleanup, do you really think this clown has any credibility left to be hurt?— btruth
- Pa. Politics and Policy blogs
- Young Philly Politics
- Politics PA
- Keystone Politics
- Philly Blogs:
- Philadelphians for Ethical Leadership
- Metropolis
- Citizen Mom
- Plan Philly
- Changing Skyline
- Citizen Hunter
- American Debate
- The Illadelphia
- Phillyist
- Trash Me
- The clog
- Philadelphia Will Do
- Philly Skyline
- Phawker
- Philebrity
- Philly Blog
- Philly Future
- Addytood
- Philly Confidential
- Great Expectations
- Philly News
- Legal Intelligencer
- Philadelphia Business Journal
- Philadelphia Weekly
- City Paper
- Sunday Sun
- Public Record
- Inquirer
- Daily News
- Tribune
- Evening bulletin
- Metro
- Philly Politics and Policy Blogs
- Fight for Room 215
- A smoke Filled Room
- Hallwatch
- The Next Mayor
- Watchdogs & Movements
- Philly for Change
- PICA
- Casino Free Philadelphia
- The Field Negro
- PA Clean Sweep
- Neighborhood Networks
- Philadelphia Forward
- May
- April
- March
- February
- January
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- Heard in the Hall columns from the Inquirer
- News | Sports | Business | What's Happening | Restaurants & Food | Entertainment | Living | Marketplace | Jobs
