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AVI mess averted, AVI mess imminent
It's been a long week for the Actual value Initiative.
AVI mess averted, AVI mess imminent
It's been a long week for the Actual value Initiative.
Yesterday, as you've probably gleaned by now from today's daily coverage (Daily News here, Inquirer here), City Council prepared to delay the implementation of AVI, over the mayor's objections, for another year.
As I'm sure you'll read in tomorrow's papers, the decision was a serious blow to Mayor Nutter, who has seen several big-ticket legislative items thwarted at the last second in Council — among them two attempts to impose a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.
Instead of implementing AVI, according to the agreement within Council, the city would tax based on the current assessments at close-to-present levels, with a tax hike of 3.59% to raise money for the Philadelphia School District.
The problem is that those current assessments are wrong — and that means that tens of thousands of Philadelphians are going to be essentially cheated out of a fair tax for another year, while tens of thousands more will get one more year's exemption from paying what they should be.
That has political implications, but also legal (and therefore financial) ones: the city now faces the prospect of lawsuits by those whose assessments are wrong, though it's not clear how successful such lawsuits might be.
What's more, those opposed to the shift to AVI, or who seek special exemptions, have one extra year to organize and lobby Council for breaks — breaks which, however deserved or not, everyone else will have to shoulder.
And they'll be much better prepared to do so: Nutter had proposed passing AVI before residents got their first property tax bills showing their new assessments, which should be completed by this September.
Of course, it was the very fact that those assessments aren't complete that lead Council to quash AVI this time, especially as the city's estimates for the total city-wide property value shrunk, causing the expected tax rate to increase.
Kicking h can down he road is preferable to municipal suicide, which is what a 1.8pct rate is.
This will knock a good 10 to 20 pct off property values in th most popular neighborhoods.
Many fewer people will pay 300 to 500k for a house when you have to rent it back from the city.
Unless you think the new development and population growth that has taken hold for the first times in 50 years is a bad thing...
Philly needs to cut sounding. Every tax it collects is near highest in the country for a municipality. School spending has doubled over last 10 years. Avi is needed. A huge tax increase to go along with it isn't.
— samac
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