Good Grief - Not Another Property Tax Letter
Mayor John Brenner
City of York, PA
50 W King Street
York, PA 17405
Dear Mayor Brenner,
Subject: Property Taxes
Let me start off by saying that I appreciate your efforts to revitalize the City of York. Having grown up here, left for several years and returned, I can see there is some improvement in the façade of several areas of the city. I have to say that a two-way George St is probably the worst thing I’ve seen done. What a complete and utter traffic mess that has created with people trying to make left turns. I hope that eventually we will admit defeat on that project and return to a one-way street. A two-way Market St didn’t have quite as detrimental of an effect mostly I believe because of the several blocks of remaining one-way street.
But my real point in writing is about the property taxes for our city residents and businesses. As I’m sure you are aware there has been an effort in our PA Legislature to reform our tax system, albeit a weak effort fraught with problems between the senate and the house mostly hinging on the spinelessness of our elected servants and their reelection desires. The biggest contention is one body seems to want to increase/expand the sales tax system – which is a very regressive system and ends up taxing the poor more than the rich, while the other side wants to increase the PIT but cannot overcome the lack of support in the other house. So now it appears that we are headed for a less than desirable solution where property taxes won’t be eliminated, school boards will still have the power to raise taxes and we’ll undergo even more financial problems for the small inner-cities of this commonwealth for the next 40 years.
My position is that we must forever eliminate property taxes. Any reduction in property taxes just means we’ve shifted part of the burden to another revenue stream and eventually both the remaining property taxes and the “shifted tax source” will both begin to rise resulting in even less for the people of the City of York.
This is an extremely important issue for the City of York, because we pay some of the highest property taxes in the state and in order to encourage people to move into the city and start businesses in the city we’ve got to stop hammering them with our outrageous property taxes. Even several of the large doctor practices that use to reside in the city have moved into the “burbs” I’m sure in part to reduce their costs.
The even more unfortunate part of these high taxes is that the children that attend the city schools are getting an education that’s quite below par for the money we are spending.
Recently I heard that the conference committee that is working on our property tax issue in Harrisburg is considering putting the opportunity on the ballot for our communities to decide if they want to raise the EIT to help reduce property taxes. Considering that most of the City of York is probably renters this is going to end in a failed vote and again the residents of the City of York will be the losers. I believe that this is one time that our legislators need to own up to their responsibilities and fund the PA Education system through the PIT. Not only would that reduce the work on our school boards and administrators from spending and inordinate amount of time on finances but it would also allow more funding to get to the front lines of the classrooms.
As you know, the City of York does not have any means of really growing our tax base because for lack of a better word we are landlocked. Even if we consider the theory of Metro York, we are only going to defray our problems for a few years until we again become landlocked into a bigger area and the same problems.
I would like to see our school taxes replaced by PIT and our City/County taxes replaced by EIT.
I choose PIT to replace the school tax revenue because it spreads the burden over the largest section of the population and our entire state population enjoys the benefits of students with good educations. Additionally it is a state responsibility to fund education. If the state has total control over the finances of our education system we as citizens know exactly who to go to when there are problems. As it stands now there is very little accountability because of the multiply layers of the funding system and our lack of ability to control any of them.
The EIT I believe is more suited to handle local needs as far as funding fire, police and city services because these services are really a function of the population that live in the area. I think that it’s high time that property owners stop paying for all the services that are mostly “sucked up” by the renting community of our city. And bear in mind that I do not want to see the renters of our community paying more without benefit either. I think that any reduction in property taxes should also be forced back, through legislation, to require landlords to reduce rent by any property tax reductions. This is an extremely important consideration, without it, these landlords will just suck in more profit.
Of course there will be several additional challenges of making such a huge change to our funding streams and those will need to be undertaken at the appropriate time but there is no sense in theorizing what might be until we have a solid direction – quite often a pitfall of our legislators – they try to have a complete solution which often fails miserably rather than a step by step solution.
I believe that now is the time to make the right choices for the future success of our city. I’d be very interested to hear your views on this subject and ultimately I would like to see you get involved with both the school board and the PA legislators to eliminate property taxes forever.
I have enclosed several letters that I have written to our state legislators and several that I’ve written to the local papers which I believe may give you even more insight into this very important issue. I should also tell you that I am seriously considering leaving the area as the $4000 I had to pay in 2005 from my Social Security check for property taxes has become quite burdensome.
Regards,
Todd Clay
City of York, PA
50 W King Street
York, PA 17405
Dear Mayor Brenner,
Subject: Property Taxes
Let me start off by saying that I appreciate your efforts to revitalize the City of York. Having grown up here, left for several years and returned, I can see there is some improvement in the façade of several areas of the city. I have to say that a two-way George St is probably the worst thing I’ve seen done. What a complete and utter traffic mess that has created with people trying to make left turns. I hope that eventually we will admit defeat on that project and return to a one-way street. A two-way Market St didn’t have quite as detrimental of an effect mostly I believe because of the several blocks of remaining one-way street.
But my real point in writing is about the property taxes for our city residents and businesses. As I’m sure you are aware there has been an effort in our PA Legislature to reform our tax system, albeit a weak effort fraught with problems between the senate and the house mostly hinging on the spinelessness of our elected servants and their reelection desires. The biggest contention is one body seems to want to increase/expand the sales tax system – which is a very regressive system and ends up taxing the poor more than the rich, while the other side wants to increase the PIT but cannot overcome the lack of support in the other house. So now it appears that we are headed for a less than desirable solution where property taxes won’t be eliminated, school boards will still have the power to raise taxes and we’ll undergo even more financial problems for the small inner-cities of this commonwealth for the next 40 years.
My position is that we must forever eliminate property taxes. Any reduction in property taxes just means we’ve shifted part of the burden to another revenue stream and eventually both the remaining property taxes and the “shifted tax source” will both begin to rise resulting in even less for the people of the City of York.
This is an extremely important issue for the City of York, because we pay some of the highest property taxes in the state and in order to encourage people to move into the city and start businesses in the city we’ve got to stop hammering them with our outrageous property taxes. Even several of the large doctor practices that use to reside in the city have moved into the “burbs” I’m sure in part to reduce their costs.
The even more unfortunate part of these high taxes is that the children that attend the city schools are getting an education that’s quite below par for the money we are spending.
Recently I heard that the conference committee that is working on our property tax issue in Harrisburg is considering putting the opportunity on the ballot for our communities to decide if they want to raise the EIT to help reduce property taxes. Considering that most of the City of York is probably renters this is going to end in a failed vote and again the residents of the City of York will be the losers. I believe that this is one time that our legislators need to own up to their responsibilities and fund the PA Education system through the PIT. Not only would that reduce the work on our school boards and administrators from spending and inordinate amount of time on finances but it would also allow more funding to get to the front lines of the classrooms.
As you know, the City of York does not have any means of really growing our tax base because for lack of a better word we are landlocked. Even if we consider the theory of Metro York, we are only going to defray our problems for a few years until we again become landlocked into a bigger area and the same problems.
I would like to see our school taxes replaced by PIT and our City/County taxes replaced by EIT.
I choose PIT to replace the school tax revenue because it spreads the burden over the largest section of the population and our entire state population enjoys the benefits of students with good educations. Additionally it is a state responsibility to fund education. If the state has total control over the finances of our education system we as citizens know exactly who to go to when there are problems. As it stands now there is very little accountability because of the multiply layers of the funding system and our lack of ability to control any of them.
The EIT I believe is more suited to handle local needs as far as funding fire, police and city services because these services are really a function of the population that live in the area. I think that it’s high time that property owners stop paying for all the services that are mostly “sucked up” by the renting community of our city. And bear in mind that I do not want to see the renters of our community paying more without benefit either. I think that any reduction in property taxes should also be forced back, through legislation, to require landlords to reduce rent by any property tax reductions. This is an extremely important consideration, without it, these landlords will just suck in more profit.
Of course there will be several additional challenges of making such a huge change to our funding streams and those will need to be undertaken at the appropriate time but there is no sense in theorizing what might be until we have a solid direction – quite often a pitfall of our legislators – they try to have a complete solution which often fails miserably rather than a step by step solution.
I believe that now is the time to make the right choices for the future success of our city. I’d be very interested to hear your views on this subject and ultimately I would like to see you get involved with both the school board and the PA legislators to eliminate property taxes forever.
I have enclosed several letters that I have written to our state legislators and several that I’ve written to the local papers which I believe may give you even more insight into this very important issue. I should also tell you that I am seriously considering leaving the area as the $4000 I had to pay in 2005 from my Social Security check for property taxes has become quite burdensome.
Regards,
Todd Clay
posted by cityguy at 7:25 PM
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