In the Inquirer today, after a couple years of delays as the Board of Revision of Taxes tinkered with their full fair actual value initiative, now its the mayor and City Council’s turn to push the change off for a while.  In the piece by Patrick Kerkstra, theories abound as to why the delay: (1) it can’t happen in time for the March 19th budget address, (2) Council and the administration want more time to look at the BRT’s new assessment numbers (heck, I’d want to see my own house’s new “value” before voting on it too) and the kicker:

Some observers think the Nutter administration wants to raise property taxes this year to help plug the $1 billion five-year budget deficit. Doing that while moving to a new assessment system might well make property owners cynical about the entire transition.

Finance Director Rob Dubow denies this but judging from all of those workshops we just went through, it seems like a small property tax hike should get strong consideration.

City dwellers, your thoughts?  Suburbanites?

I think we’re going to hear a lot about property taxes over the coming weeks as the mayor presents the budget and City Council deliberates.