[Ed Falkowski]

Has anyone in the Tri-State (PA-DE-NJ) area been keeping up with the multi-day, multi-page Inquirer article about the City of Philadelphia Board of Revision of Taxes (BRT)? What are your throughts? Do you think that the "Actual Value Initiative" will ever see the light of day? Do you think that Mayor Nutter can follow through with his desires to disband the BRT (he proposed its dissolution when he was a councilman as did John Street back in the 80s when he was a councilman)? It kills me how people can basically ignore (and I interpret the "have not been able to do anything about it" as ignoring, also) this kind of problem until a $1.5 billion dollar deficit comes and slams you in the face and then, and ONLY then, do they cry and scream for drastic reform. This could be a double-edged sword, too, if Mayor Nutter's 2-year tax increase goes into affect concurrently with the Actual Value Initiative... imagine getting a greatly increased assessment along with a 17% tax rate increase to boot! You think that's going to affect the foreclosure rate (both residential and commercial) in the City? If a "For Sale" sign goes up at the Ritz Carlton Hotel at Broad and Chestnut... that will give you the answer.

The result of all of this BS is either going to make Mayor Nutter and the Philadelphia City Council look like White Knights or like unbelievable morons... it'll be interesting to see how this pans out. I just revamped the real estate tax section of all of my narrative reports for the properties that I do in Philadelphia... this is stuff that clients NEED to know!