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to promote civic engagement in the Philadelphia region.Phila Mayor Confirms He Will Seek Higher Property & Sales Taxes
Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 4:19 pm - by Matt Campbell. Filed under: Budget.
The Philadelphia Daily News reports this afternoon that Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter will seek higher sales and property taxes to help balance next year’s budget. Both tax increases are included in a budget draft that has been given the city council. If approved, they would take effect this summer.
He plans to propose a temporary two year property tax increase of 19 percent over the current rate in the fiscal year that starts on July 1 and 14.5 percent over the current rate in the fiscal year that starts in July 2010. Although real estate tax revenues are split with the School District of Philadelphia, the entire increase would go into city coffers, Nutter said.
Nutter believes that the typical household in Philadelphia will see their property taxes jump $50 a month. The sales tax increase, most likely, would call for pushing the city’s sales tax rate up one percent for a total of 8 percent.
Also, the mayor said there will be no layoffs to either fire or police departments. The mayor is expected to deliver his spending plan to city council this Thursday.
March 16th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Where are the layoffs of lazy and unproductive city employees with bad attitudes?
How about slimming down the overpaid and overstaffed Mayor’s Office and Managing Director’s Office?
What about aggressively enforcing traffic, sanitation, and other laws to improve quality of life and revenue collection?
We need some bold and creative solutions, not the same tired old ways that just don’t work to get to the root of the problem.
March 17th, 2009 at 10:06 am
I second this. I’m tired of the city going after (eating) its own citizens for money we don’t have. We (my family) pay our taxes. We pay our bills. Stop hounding us for more money - we pay enough already! Go after the real deadbeats! The government is bloated - why do city council members need “drivers”? Why do they have so much staff for everything? How do regular city folk manage to do what they need to do everyday with extra “staff” to do it for them? Every day I see “city employees” sitting on their butts, drinking coffee and talking on their cell phones or chatting while one person is working in a hole or doing work - but I bet they’re all getting paid! We can barely afford property taxes already, and we’ve already cut spending due to the cost of food and everything else - keep raising prices and that will drive even more people out of the city. This plan will backfire - raise prices, and lose more residents. Lose more residents, lose more revenue. What does he consider a “typical” household? $50 a month? Maybe he thinks that’s cheap ….. what if you’re already living on the edge of a budget and can’t stretch another $50 out of your paycheck? What if you’re trying not to lose your job? This is compounded by that AIG news, like rubbing salt in a raw open wound.
March 17th, 2009 at 11:37 am
@disgusted
Feel free to send us photos of these “city employees” that you see “every day.” But you also need to actually ask the ones who don’t appear to be working why they aren’t working. You might find that you happen to be watching them during a coffee or lunch break… the same breaks enjoyed by workers in every other sector.
I totally agree that there are inefficiencies to be found and there are unpaid taxes and fees to be collected. But ultimately, even if you went after ALL of that, it still would only cover a fraction of the budget deficit that the city is facing because of the global economic downturn. The major expenses facing the city aren’t due to the number of workers but to the expense of the pension and health care plans as well as the growing costs of the prison system. Cutting a few positions at the margins (even as much as 100-200 workers) doesn’t solve that issue.
And the unions representing the workers will, justifiably, do what they need to do to protect those benefits. That’s what unions do. They protect their workers and you can’t fault them for that. So the question is, what city service are you willing to sacrifice and for how long if the upcoming contract negotiations lead to a strike?
April 15th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
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