Great Expectations

It's not really rocket science, but for some reason, the paper rarely covers the issue -- the city levels property taxes but doesn't collect them. It started to now at the end of the Street administration, but how much is now collected is a mystery unless you buy the Tribune, a long term Street supporter in words and money.

Why not be able to see the Tax Delinquency sales online too, along with Tax Lien sales?

Because this is how the city collects the revenue it needs to fight crime, have schools worth the name, and do what it proposes to do.

For some reason, the paper is shy to point out what PICA and other advocates have already -- the city is owed a huge amount of property taxes that it hasn't followed up on.

There's $265 million in overdue taxes on property that has not paid up in over a decade! There's $50 million owed by people who don't live in Philly, but own property here.

www.hallwatch.org/proptax/about/redelinq/stats/summary

Then, if you look by zip code, there are whole zip codes that have owners where HALF of all of property owners owe taxes! That's completely unsustainable! This is in the neighborhoods where that money is needed the most!

http://www.hallwatch.org/proptax/about/redelinq/stats/delinqbyzip/index_html?skey=pcent&rkey=pcent

This sort by zip code and property tax debt is shocking to even the most forgiving anti-tax person. You can't have neighborhood after neighborhood with double-digit percentages of owners who owe the city taxes.

Period.

While the papers want to "afflict the comfortable" the comfortable are paying the bills. The paper thinks it can "comfort the afflicted" but the so called "afflicted" who are not paying their fair share for the footprint they own are not in need of getting off the hook for paying property taxes, they need infrastructure, police, schools, and clean streets again.

Who wants these huge blocks of nonpaying owners? Cheap votes, anyone? I hope Nutter enforces property tax collection in his choice of Dubow, because we can't abolish city government. But we can collect the revenue owed to the city -- foreclose on these assets or pay up in full. Reverse mortgages, anything.

Debt is not acceptable anymore. When will the paper admit that their good-hearted proposals have to be paid for, and that the money is right there?

I don't think the subject is boring at all. Anyone with a business knows that the accounting is the most important part. You have to know what you take in, and know what you spend.

Then you have to make adjustments. I don't know why the paper sort of treats the reader like they are too dim to understand the issue PICA raises. PICA did a good slide show, for example, but if you wanted to see it, you had to have been tuned into Brett Mandel's Philadelphia Forward website.

This is the bottomline of what the city can and can't do.

The paper really has to understand itself where the concessions have to come, and where the hidden-in-plain-sight revenue is.

Does any business not collect what is owed it? The city has not foreclosed on at least $527 million in revenue from property taxes on 139,000 properties.

Why not investigate that fully? What should be hands off, but what should be full ahead collected? Not every property is the proverbial little old lady.

What about non-arm's length transactions? Should a person be able to get a property for $1 without paying what is owed in taxes and gas, water, and other liens?

I think not. That should all be paid at the closing or transfer of the property to the new relative owner.

There are simple things other counties and states do that prevent blight, create jobs, and renew communities, while getting tax revenue promptly, and they don't SPEND money to do it, they just collect the money owed them.

Philly has to do the same thing. We have to foreclose promptly according to law, not wait, and wait, and wait, and use bogus payment plans. The payment plans have to take the city's own needs into account.

The policy of no property tax collection has really hurt the city in so many ways. People are on to it, too. There are a huge number of people and businesses that know that the city won't collect, especially if you cry and cry.

Joe Frazier is a good example. Oh, I just, had to sue my daughter/manager, but I dropped the suit, and I...I...I, etc.

This is the story for every large property tax debtor.

The city has to collect in earnest. This is just when property taxes were lower, also. It's not like people haven't paid their recent taxes in the past few years. That excuse doesn't wash either. Something that is 4,7, 10 years overdue is from back in the day.

We can even afford to be basically generous on benefits, with some moderation. But we have to collect what is owed the city in a professional way.

We have to put property that the government holds back in the property tax paying private market, pronto.

The city owns about 1,000 properties that it doesn't pay itself taxes on. Most of these are just vacant lots that a renovator would buy.

The RDA holds about 1,600 properties that it doesn't pay the city taxes for. That's just way too much of a hit against revenue flow to the city for schools, pensions, benefits, and police/justice/safety costs.

The PHA even, pays zero in property taxes to the city. Is this really wise? The people who cost the city the most have a landlord that pays nothing? PHA has too much empty housing and vacant lots, too. There's no reason to hold this stuff, when the city can get property later for PHA to use for the latest project.

The city is killing itself off by killing off a potential tax base that is huge. Why is it taboo for the paper to write about it? Don't we need new ideas?

There is no reason Philly has to be the dirty, half vacant, drug infested hole that it is now, except that we keep doing things exactly the same way year after year.