Question 2:
“Shall the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter be amended so that, effective January 1, 2008, City elected officials may become candidates for nomination or election to any public office without first resigning from their City office?”
DENIED with 55.33 % of the vote
Question 3:
“Shall the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter be amended to create a Youth Commission, with members between the ages of 12 and 23 years of age, to be responsible for advising the City Council and the Mayor regarding issues affecting children and youth in order to ensure that children and youth have a voice regarding policies and decisions affecting them?”
APPROVED with 67.81 % of the vote
Question 4:
“Shall the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter be amended to provide that the six appointed members of the City Planning Commission shall include an architect, an urban planner, a traffic engineer, an attorney experienced in land use issues, and two representatives of Philadelphia community groups that participate in land use issues?”
APPROVED with 80.99 % of the vote
Question 5:
"Shall the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter be amended to provide that the City Planning Commission may extend for up to 45 days the time period within which it must provide a recommendation to Council on pending legislation affecting zoning, the City's physical development plan, land subdivision, or authorizing the purchase or sale of real estate?"
APPROVED with 70.82 % of the vote
Question 6:
"Shall the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter be amended to provide for the creation, appointment, powers and duties of an independent Zoning Code Commission which would recommend amendments to the Philadelphia Zoning Code to make the Code consistent and easy to understand, and to enhance and improve Philadelphia's city planning process while encouraging development and protecting the character of Philadelphia's neighborhoods?"
APPROVED with 78.70 % of the vote
Question 7:
"Shall the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter be amended to state the citizens' views regarding the mission served by U.S. troops in Iraq and that the citizens of Philadelphia urge the United States to make year 2007 the time to redeploy U.S. troops out of harm's way in Iraq?"
APPROVED with 71.55 % of the vote
Question 8:
"Should the City of Philadelphia borrow $129,695,000 for and toward: Transit; Streets and Sanitation; Municipal Buildings; Parks; Recreation and Museums and; Economic and Community Development?"
APPROVED with 64.31 % of the vote
Question 9:
Shall the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter be amended to add a provision stating that the citizens of Philadelphia urge the stopping of real estate tax assessment increases which would result from the Philadelphia Board of Revision of Taxes' use of a new method of figuring tax assessments called "Full Valuation"?"
APPROVED with 70.29 % of the vote
Comments (7)
What about question 1, the gambling?!?!?
That's the important one
Posted by Jay | May 16, 2007 12:35 AM
At least here -- with regard to the ballot questions -- everyone voted the exact same way I did, or would've if I lived in certain districts. For Anastasio's weak showing against incumbent DiCicco in the 1st Councilmanic District was a total surprise. But that, of course, is a topic for other than this particular thread. Meantime, anyone have any clue why the Inquirer tried to urge everyone to vote all wrongly with regard to the ballot questions? That is, the last one in particular?
Posted by Steve W. | May 16, 2007 12:36 AM
The Inquirer realizes that the city's property taxes are not just low, they are the reason for bad schools, overcrowded prisons that can't hold the true amount of dangerous offenders, and lack of police and law enforcement assets.
We have houses in the city whose owners only pay $200 a year. $300 to $500 a year is not uncommon.
Compare that to the surrounding counties.
Meanwhile, we have a wage tax to compensate that is blamed by economists on the right and left as the reason much of the region's business left the city but stayed in PA.
So, it isn't really realistic to pretend that someone's taxes can remain what they were in 1977 when our costs are in 2007.
Posted by Anonymous | May 16, 2007 2:33 AM
Property taxes will have to go up to allow the wage tax to be abolished.
Full valuation of real market values is critical to having a modern system of taxation akin to what is used in the rest of the state and metropolitan region.
Houses are taxed on what they are worth in reality. Owners fund the schools and services. Properties that are vacant, empty, or otherwise unwanted and unpaid for are sold for the accrued back taxes, thereby putting the property back into the paying tax base.
Schools, for one, can't get anymore money from Harrisburg and elsewhere without the city doing more to raise revenue the way all PA school districts do it.
Posted by Anonymous | May 16, 2007 2:38 AM
Ballot questions should not happen during the primary election...
It gives skewed results becaue so many people do not vot e during the priamries. Democrats came out in full force to pick thier candidate... but Republicans may be lax in this area to go to the polls since they have very little choice...
Issues such as the ones above should be addressed during the general election so more people will vote.
As a Republican, the only reason I went to the polls yesterday was to vote on the ballot questions.
Posted by Anonymous | May 16, 2007 11:34 AM
Do the ballot questions have any legislative power?
The denial of full valuation is a marketing problem. As I understand it, by law, we are already supposed to have full valuation. What the full valuation effort actually is, is a way of incorporating more objective data about housing values to determine assessed value, rather than using an assessors opinion as the sole basis for the valuation.
But they called it "full valuation." What a stupid mistake. They should have called it fair valuation. Or evidence-based valuation. Something more marketable and understandable. But perhaps the BRT people are so stupid, they don't even know what they are doing?
I find it odd that in the same election we go for a wonk, who will use evidence as the basis for policy, we also vote to stop using evidence for tax policy. The system will go on, as usual: if you know an assessor, or if you talk nice to one, you can reduce your assessment more than if you don't know what's going on.
Right now, the BRT is being used by city council to raise taxes, by raising assessments as best they can in order to raise tax revenue. The BRT initiated "full evaluation" in a badly-thought-out effort to get off the hot seat, and get council to take the heat, by having to raise millage rates in order to raise revenue. This city has been run by a bunch of cowardly politicians, who don't respect the people enough to explain things clearly.
I don't know if Nutter will take on this issue. I hope he does. Property should be assessed using the same rules for everyone, not subjectively, by individual assessors, as it is in the current system. Right now, if you're rich or smart, you've got an advantage in convincing assessors to limit the increase in your assessment. So the poor, increasingly, pay a higher proportion of the property tax.
But they called it "full valuation." They couldn't have found a better name if they were trying their hardest to make it fail, politically.
I have hopes for Nutter, but I doubt if even he is clever enough to be able to sell a change that would make our property tax system more fair.
Posted by Plokozhopsky | May 16, 2007 11:35 PM
Just to interject some intelligent thinking into this otherwise getting way out of whack discussion, property taxes should be done away with completely because -- and LISTEN UP -- it is never sane fiscal policy to aim taxation where there is no cashflow. If homeowners are using their properties to generate money, okay, in that instance taxation makes sense. But if there's no cashflow as a result of homeownership, there's nothing that can be taxed. So if taxation is imposed regardless, this forces the homeowner, unless he can generate revenue by some other means, to lose what is rightfully his -- the whole "a man's home is his castle" concept, which this nation is premised on.
The Philadelphia wage tax on the other hand makes perfect sense, because there there IS cashflow.
As for Philadelphia's "high" wage tax deterring businesses from operating here, that ONLY applies to businesses of a very crooked nature. For there are plenty of good and upstanding businesses that want to operate here. And believe me, it is NOT the "high" Philadelphia wage tax driving them away. You all remember Meyer-Werftt, don't you?
But getting back to the original discussion, you NEVER want to aim taxation where there's no cashflow (unless you're of some sort of anti-American/Nazi/Fascist mindset.) It's just that simple.
As for paying for police/fire protection, public schools, parks & recreation, libraries, street maintenance, etc., of course these things have to be paid for. But aiming taxation where there is no cashflow to do so is obviously not the right answer. Rather, the right answer is letting good businesses operate in this city once more.
Now we can argue this from here to kingdom come, but I'm just saying how it is.
Posted by Steve W. | May 17, 2007 1:55 AM