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Where were all the people who were upset about their real estate taxes? The meeting was right in our neighborhood. Two City Council members (Blackwell & Rizzo) thought it was important enough to come. But neighborhood representation was very low.
Here's what I thought were the key points
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1) The Commission seems to be pretty much in agreement that some form of gradual change to a land-based tax should be recommended. Gradual in the sense of shifting the assessments over a few years from emphasis on the "improvements" (what's built on the lot) to the land itself.
2) The Commission seems unable to agree on whether the complicated and somewhat high business taxes or the simple and very high wage tax is more of a deterrent to economic growth in Philadelphia. There were a few unkind words passed between two of the Commission members at the podium on this topic. Apparently, they're doing surveys and so forth but are getting answers that each side interprets in its own way. And they have no idea how to balance the effects of either on the tradeoff between attracting new productive citizens to town and providing incentives for jobs for low-skill relatively-uneducated people who are already here.
3) The Commission seems to think that "behavior taxes" are a wonderful thing. These are fines for code violations (sensible stuff like real safety hazards and bullshit like fines for setting out trash in cardboard boxes and -- soon -- for having a glass bottle mixed in with the garbage instead of in the 'recyclables' bucket). This is a very worrisome attitude (IMHO) because it's conducive to letting a bunch of unsophisticated overzealous city workers go hog wild in issuing nuisance violations for everything in sight. (Nuisance violations are those for which it's easier to pay the fine than to bother fighting it, even though you could win if you did).
4) A representative of the Fels Institute at Penn made a very good point (inadvertently) from the floor that one reason business taxes are so high is that "institutional" employers, who comprise a huge part of the local economy, don't pay any. This leaves a lot more of the burden on folks trying to operate businesses. Yet, how does a university (for instance) differ from a private business in the services for which these sorts of taxes pay?
5) Another HO -- Ed Schwartz is rather pedantic and was using the meeting to get people to corroborate his viewpoint rather than learn anything from them. At one juncture, he was visibly unhappy when one of the other Committee representatives (Melvin Jackson) noted "not everyone agrees with that." Ed tried to ignore this, and "guess which rabble-rouser" spoke up and asked Mr Jackson to elaborate. This, incidentally, is what precipitated the "unkind words" noted in #2 above.
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At least two other people who subscribe to this list were there. Perhaps they'd like to add their perspective to the above.
Al Krigman
KRF Corporation |
