Dec 14, 2018 3 min read

Washington County’s property reassessment seems to be the holiday gift that keeps on giving for taxpayers this time of year.

That certainly is the case for homeowners and businesses in the City of Washington, as the municipality’s exorbitant taxes on both land and buildings are going up once again next year to pay for the $14.8 million budget.

The city is raising its land tax by 4 mills to an eye-popping 38.71 mills, while the tax on buildings increased a more modest .4 mills to 4.03. Those two numbers combined put the City of Washington’s property tax rate well above every other municipality in the county, and second place isn’t even close.

Only Donora and Charleroi – 5.637 mills and 5.33 respectively – are higher, but they don’t include the whopping land tax on top of that.

City officials claimed they needed to raise $800,000 in revenue to fill a budget shortfall, including a potential $300,000 loss in revenue due to people challenging their reassessments over the past year. With taxes this high, no wonder why people are fighting to save a buck while the city’s tax rate balloons.

To put the high cost in perspective, someone with a modestly assessed home at $100,000 – let’s say $80,000 on the building and $20,000 on the land – would pay nearly $1,100 in city property taxes alone. Of that figure, $774 is just on the value on the land.

And this doesn’t count the separate $243 solid waste fee each home pays, nor the additional earned income tax for everyone who lives and works in the city.

These out-of-control taxes are squeezing the middle class out of the city, which will continue to lead to more blight and fewer economic opportunities. Maybe city officials should consider making spending cuts rather than raising taxes every year.

There clearly is a major problem with Washington’s finances and budget, but the two-tiered tax revenue system isn’t making it much better. What worked just a few years ago has gone terribly wrong following the countywide reassessment in which contractor Tyler Technologies appeared not to take into account how land values could adversely affect homeowners.

A similar budgeting fiasco is happening in neighboring North Franklin, where the supervisors there are poised to make tough decisions as they stare down an $800,000 deficit. Township officials have said they either raise taxes or cut services. But that seems nearly impossible with the already slim $2.1 million budget proposal on the table, especially when nearly half of which pays for the township’s $942,500 full-time police department.

The supervisors there blamed a major loss in commercial real estate property assessments over the past year following a flurry of successful appeals. The most obvious way to fill the gap is by raising tax revenue, and it seems likely North Franklin’s 1.45-mill rate will have to more than double to fix its funky budget math.

These are just a couple of examples of the problems some communities in Washington County are now facing in the wake of the property tax reassessment. While these municipalities didn’t ask for the reassessment, it’s the responsibility of local leaders to find a solution. And with municipal and county elections just around the corner, they better figure it out quickly.