Tag: property tax

Pension Obligations Are Taxing Property Owners

Pension problems facing school districts have come home to roost.  As we wrote in a recent blog: “Unless there is agreement on pension reform legislation…most school districts in Pennsylvania face ruinous increases in pension funding.”  To handle this increase, districts will have to raise taxes, lay off personnel, or both.  And while the Commonwealth, through Act 1 of 2006, restricts a district’s ability to raise property tax rates, in Allegheny County eleven school districts, 25 percent of the total, have petitioned for an exception to this law meaning they now have permission to increase property tax rates above the Department of Education’s prescribed limit.

 

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Major Assessment Developments for Washington County

 

Two big developments regarding property reassessments have occurred in the last three weeks that will have a tremendous impact on Washington County.  As we noted in our inaugural Brief of this year, the County has been in a court battle with two of its school districts since 2008 over conducting a revaluation of property, a task not carried out since 1981.

 

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