Also this issue:

The Battle of Fort Mifflin
The city is miffed over a website -- created by the fort’s executive director -- which takes potshots at the airport and Osama.
-Daryl Gale

Love Story
A jailed mobster mulls suicide to help the woman he loves land a movie deal.
-Howard Altman

Safe Streets Fallout
17th District cops want the public to know they are out there.
-Daryl Gale

Judicious
-Mary F. Patel

In Black and White
The Daily News draws fire for a cover some found racist.
-Deborah Bolling

The Bell Curve
City Paper's weekly gauge of Philly's Quality of Life

September 12-18, 2002

city beat

Debt and Taxes

Overtaxed: Councilman Frank DiCicco wants to slow down recent property tax increases. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

The BRT and City Councilman Frank DiCicco are at war over the recent property tax hike.

by Jenn Carbin

Councilman Frank DiCicco and David Glancey, chairman of the Board of the Revision of Taxes (BRT), are among the 240,000 city residents recently notified that their property taxes are being raised for 2003. Glancey was slammed -- the taxes on his Old City property went up 50 percent. The building abatement that DiCicco enjoyed for three years recently expired; the true property tax value on his Bella Vista townhouse went up over a third, to $2,181.

Both DiCicco and Glancey admit that many of the city's residential properties, particularly in affluent areas, have for years been taxed at amounts way under their market values.

That's where their common ground on this issue pretty much ends, however.

Glancey is trying to rectify a system that most accurately taxes the least expensive homes while it undertaxes the most expensive. Even with significant increases, many are still assessed under market value.

Though some suggest the increases are the city's more surreptitious way of raising funds, Glancey, not surprisingly, waves off

such suspicions. Referring to the taxpayers, he says, “This is not a war between us and them, because I’m them.”

DiCicco, on the other hand, is trying to keep his First District constituents from going under. And, the more cynical might say, score points for an upcoming election, though his tax abatement legislation and the fact that he helped a few hundred constituents appealing their raises this past year, belie this.

DiCicco’s district includes Society Hill, Bella Vista and Queen Village, three areas under-assessed for years, where the kind of educated people who tend to know about appeals rights live. The latter two feature, of late, soaring sales prices. As a result, DiCicco’s office has spent the past few weeks fielding “hundreds of calls” from unhappy constituents notified of significant tax increases. The councilman is in the midst of a four-neighborhood tour covering South Philly, Society Hill and Port Richmond, to aid with the appeals process.

Glancey, no doubt preparing himself for the appeals that will surely engulf his office between now and mid-October, stands by the BRT’s numbers, maintaining that “this whole deal is to make the system better.”

DiCicco questions the approach. “I think the BRT made a tactical mistake. To, in one fell swoop, hit people with such an exorbitant increase -- it’s offensive, it’s obscene. Nobody’s ready for this, especially people who were reassessed last year. It [diminishes] what I did with the appeals last year. They backdoored these people.”

DiCicco says it’s not so much the increases but the way they were done. “If they had done it so that the increases were more palatable, maybe over 10 years. But we’re looking at increases for one year, in addition to, mind you, the highest transfer tax in the country.”

DiCicco holds that this will not just drive people out of this city, which also features high wage tax and automobile insurance rates, but cost it new residents. When it’s pointed out that after the city gets current, future residents wouldn’t face such sharp increases but rather fair market values, he says it doesn’t matter. “People think it’s going to cost you a fortune to live here. That might not be the reality, but that’s the perception. It’s the perception that kills.”

It’s not that Glancey is entirely unsympathetic. “I understand that there’s some agony that folks are going to face,” he says. “If you feel somehow aggrieved, follow the appeals process. I’ll be here; this is my job. Everybody’ll get their say, and when we’re through, we’re through.”

Ultimately, though, he is unapologetic for attempting the increases. “I’ve said before that the activity of the real estate market is what drives my job. We based what we did on over 40,000 [real estate] sales. That means at least 80,000 people -- a buyer and seller for each sale -- made decisions about what the market would be. [The BRT] didn’t make those decisions.”