Letters: Antiquated tax system spawns vacant lots
A "pop-up garden" is a fine temporary change for the "dusty, rocky, weedy, littered, and windy lot" at 20th and Market Streets ("A garden pops up on an ugly lot," June 14), but the real wonder is what allowed this eyesore to exist for more than 20 years: the city's antiquated and incompetently administered system of real estate taxation.
A "pop-up garden" is a fine temporary change for the "dusty, rocky, weedy, littered, and windy lot" at 20th and Market Streets ("A garden pops up on an ugly lot," June 14), but the real wonder is what allowed this eyesore to exist for more than 20 years: the city's antiquated and incompetently administered system of real estate taxation.
Applying the same rate to the assessed value of land and the assessed value of a building gives speculators an incentive to sit on vacant land.
The block with the new pop-up garden consists of two nearly identical parcels - the vacant lot and the Blue Cross building. The latest tax bill for the former was $258,655, the latest for the latter, $3,196,864. One parcel provides us with a blighted corner, while the other generates business- and employment-tax revenues that, in all likelihood, far exceed its property-tax bill.
If we taxed land at a higher rate than buildings, the Blue Cross tax bill would be about the same, but the bill for the lot would increase to $2 million or more, and we might have seen a pop-up building 20 years ago instead of a pop-up garden today.
John R. Attanasio
Philadelphia