Calling on the Board of Revision of Taxes to withdraw all assessment increase notices issued in 2009, and to assess all properties for tax year 2010 at the same assessed value used for tax year 2009.

WHEREAS, In 2009, the Board of Revision of Taxes (BRT) issued approximately 18,000 notices of assessment increases for tax year 2010, which would result in substantial property tax increases for those property owners; and

WHEREAS, The 2009 reassessment notices were issued notwithstanding the fact that the BRT's assessment system, despite years of work and the expenditure of millions of tax dollars, continues to produce inaccurate data. Any doubt as to the reliability of the BRT's data was put to rest when Richard Negrin, the BRT interim executive director recently appointed by the Mayor to oversee an overhaul of the BRT's assessment practices, ordered an immediate assessment freeze for up to two years to allow the BRT time to produce accurate data. In an article in the January 27, 2010 Philadelphia Inquirer, Mr. Negrin is quoted as stating succinctly, “It's your classic garbage-in, garbage-out scenario”; and

WHEREAS, Despite the admission that the BRT's assessment practices are unreliable, the proposed assessment increases for tax year 2010 remain in place, and the BRT continues to hear appeals from those proposed increases; and

WHEREAS, As a matter of simple fairness and common sense, the BRT should not be defending assessment increases issued under an admittedly broken and unreliable assessment system; now, therefore,

RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA,

That the Council calls on the Board of Revision of Taxes to withdraw all assessment increase notices issued in 2009, and to assess all properties for tax year 2010 at the same assessed value used for tax year 2009.

End