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City Council To The Actual Value Initiative: “Ugh, Can We Just Deal With This Next Year?”

Last week, City Council took a long hard look at the Actual Value Initiative being pushing by Mayor Nutter‘s administration and said, “Not right now.” According to the Daily News, “Council members said they will approve a plan to keep the current property tax system for the 2012-2013 fiscal year, with a pledge to go to AVI the following year.”

Dave Davies over at Newsworks took some time to lay this out for all of us (the city’s current awful property assessments, how the losers in this may outnumber the winners, how much of a nightmare this will be next year), and it looks … dreadful. It’s worth checking out not only for the breakdown of what this all means, but also for the rebuttal in the comments by Councilman Bill Green, who says:

Council delayed this with open eyes. We did the right thing that you argue may be against our interest. We will do the right thing next year and get AVI done but we will use the data and the tools available to blunt unintended effects and impacts. Next year council, with full information, will responsibly provide AVI relief that helps people who can’t afford it and has the least impact (increase) on millage for everyone else.”

Or maybe the members of City Council are strong believers in the Mayan apocalypse theory, and they just don’t want to deal with AVI at all. Yeah, that’s definitely it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 19th, 2012 at 11:58 am.

  • tsarstruck

    Ha. Good one, Bill. You’re hilarious.

  • Eric

    Are you crazy?  What sane person would set a rate without first knowing what the assessments are?  What Nutter proposed was completely irresponsible and hypocritical — he said it was revenue neutral when in fact it was a whopping back door tax increase!  A 1.8% tax rate based on real market value, the mayor’s proposal is insanity and would make Philadelphia one of the highest taxing cities in the nation.  The effects on the city would be devastating.  City Council will have to make some serious, reasonable cuts. Teachers are going to have to give back something.   The whole burden can not be imposed on homeowners.  City Council did the right thing but they can not sit back and relax.  They’ve got to work out a fair AVI plan that taxes at a fair rate.  More than 1% of market value is too high for a city like Philadelphia.