Nutter, Council members meet about AVI

Philadelphia residents are one step closer to getting new tax bills.

On Tuesday, Mayor Michael Nutter met behind closed doors with several City Council members to talk about his plan to fix the city’s broken property-tax system.

That overhaul, known as the Actual Value Initiative (AVI), involves reassessing every property in Philadelphia.

The Nutter administration said at the meeting that the preliminary total value of all properties in the city is just under $100 billion, City Hall sources said.

This is significant because Council has been asking for more data about AVI for months. In June, Council members decided to delay AVI because, they said, they didn’t have enough information.  

After the meeting, Nutter said the city is almost finished the task of reassessing all of Philadelphia’s properties.  

“We are very, very close to fully fixing the property assessment system in Philadelphia,” he said, “and that is a good thing.” 

According to City Hall sources, the Nutter administration estimated that the property-tax rate would be between about 1.3 percent and 1.4 percent, in order to take in a targeted amount of revenue.  

The city is planning to send property owners notices of their new assessments in February.