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Monday, January 21, 2002
We are being outpriced from our hard-earned homes
My husband and I are like thousands of others whose aspirations are mostly focused on our personal, rather than professional, lives. We work to maintain a decent life for our family, to beautify our home, to tend our garden. In 1999, we bought a small, 120-year-old house on a large lot in the city. Before we could afford any major renovations, we were improperly reassessed, and forced to take out a home equity loan just to pay our escrow as we awaited our appeal.
We won our appeal, bringing the assessed value down to the sale price, which only made sense. Our mortgage has still gone up $200 a month. In addition, we are paying on the home equity loan, while we fight to get a partial refund of our escrow from our mortgage company.
Now we find ourselves facing a new $35,000 increase in our assessment that we cannot afford. Adding to our debt with a loan increase for escrow is just not possible as we wait for yet another appeal hearing. Frankly, this reassessment threatens our lifestyle. We will appeal again, but are now seriously considering moving to another county. We can't afford to fight this every year.
My husband and I are college educated and in our early 30s. It took long months to find decent paying jobs and even now my husband travels 30 miles to work. We've watched friends and family leave the region to better their careers and lives, but we hung on because this is where we wanted to be. We've also watched our leaders drive Pittsburgh and Allegheny County into debt with new stadiums and a convention center, doing little to bring new or better jobs into the area. Pittsburgh at least had affordable housing prices in many old neighborhoods. Now, this too, is being destroyed.
Frankly, the only advantage to living here now is the emotional connection, and that wears thin when most of your income is going to keep a leaking roof over your head that, when fixed, will just raise your taxes next January.
I am pleading with the decision-makers to reconsider this entire assessment, which has outpriced many from their hard-earned homes. Allegheny County cannot afford to alienate its residents. If my family, who loves our home and is so rooted in the region, is willing to leave, there are thousands more who are probably considering it.
Please do the right thing for the county. Leave our 2001 reassessments in place. Let us take a breath and make some tough decisions of our own.
NICOLE WALSH
Responsible spending
The citizens of Allegheny County do not need "annual re-evaluations," as the PG states in a Jan. 17 editorial ("Time Out"). We don't need a "strong leader" to telling us we do.
We don't need government finding loopholes in the law to raise our property taxes. If you need to raise taxes to cover the cost of government, then do so.
Don't hide behind a farce of inequity in property valuations. If you're a strong leader, make the tough decision to raise the millage and then be accountable for doing it. If it's right, then the people will back you.
What the citizens of Allegheny County need is responsible spending by government. We need government leaders who actually listen to the people they are supposed to represent.
And here's an idea for the property tax: How about you pay tax on what you actually paid for the property?
STEPHEN SMILEY
A fair tax
With respect to Allegheny County's 2002 property reassessments, the methodology used to assess property values, while intended to be fair, may work well in a "Paul O'Neill everyone is affluent" world.
However, it is seriously flawed when a property has been occupied for some time by the same owner, particularly when the inhabitants are low-income or reside in a gentrified area.
By using comparables from recent sales, the implicit assumption is that the property is in "move-in" condition. Very often this is not the case, as many of these residences require significant repairs, updates or improvements.
This puts some of Allegheny County's largest demographic groups -- low-income, senior or working-poor citizens -- in a situation with the onus of proving, via an appeal, that their residence is not, in fact, "comparable." Sadly, these are the people least able or equipped to afford a successful or cogent appeal.
We all know that, over the course of a lifetime, most people don't sell or purchase homes often, at least not once a year. Also, most household incomes don't increase by double-digit percentages per year.
If reassessments continue with near-or-double-digit increases, this method of taxation will become so oppressively burdensome (regardless of class) that alternative, fairer methods will become necessary, and people will demand change.
The solution is a fair tax, not "fair" market values.
RICHARD RUSSELL WOOD
Double the fun
I have a solution to county Chief Executive Jim Roddey's tax assessment situation: Have paramedics deliver the health questionnaires directly behind the 2002 tax debacl. As people have heart attacks and strokes, they can be taken to the hospital.
Roddey: another reason to flee Allegheny County. Tom Flaherty for mayor.
WAYNE R. BENNETT
Grabbing the bucks
Apparently our wonderful elected officials have found another way to tax all the private homeowners in the county without putting themselves in the position of being held accountable for raising taxes. Who's going to stop them? The new yearly reassessment lets them off the hook. Their "let the public be dammed" attitude is disgusting.
The law setting a 5 percent windfall level for any taxing body is an outright farce. Surely you realize, as I think I and everyone else does, that there is no way to prove that an entire municipality has gone over the 5 percent windfall level.
As for those officials who say, "I pay the same taxes, too," I say they're full of it, because they make sure the public till compensates to cover their expenses. Just witness our state and federal officials who jack up their wages and perks when they think they can get away with it.
Mr. Roddey goes to Washington to save US Airways, but when it comes to the taxpayers who pay for every whim a politician can dream up, he says, "Let them eat cake." Politicians want respect. What a joke and I'm not laughing.
BOB WAGNER
Cut the mockery
I disagree with your decision to run a photo of President Bush's recent injury on the front page of the Jan. 15 issue ("Bush's Fainting Has Simple Explanation"). Though news of the president's choking experience makes an important yet somewhat amusing story, the illustration took things too far.
I give both the president and the Post-Gazette credit for taking the occurrence with humor. Running a large photo of the scratch he suffered, however, seemed more to display your childish amusement at Bush's fallibility than your commitment to report events of public interest.
A newspaper must bring light to a public official's errors in policy and even lifestyle, but it should not use an innocent mishap to mock such an individual.
ELIZABETH STROHM
Hold the hysteria
As a Mt. Lebanon School District product (1993), I am amused by the furor over Dr. "Patch" Adams's recent speaking engagement. I am awed, however, by the reactions -- ranging from skittish to frighteningly ignorant -- of some adults within the community.
Letter writer Patrick Hewitt of Upper Saint Clair, for example, has concluded that permitting a school-assembly speaker (e.g. Dr. Adams) to openly question prevailing American foreign policies is certain to result in a small percentage of exposed teens becoming radical fundamentalist terrorists (" 'Patch' and Propaganda," Jan. 17). Mt. Lebanon school officials might -- might -- have been more prudent to offer a counterpoint to Dr. Adams' presentation, but let's not get carried away.
Indeed, our public schools should strive to endow young citizens with the capacity and the will to think critically about the manner in which they are governed and the policies by which they, as Americans, will be judged beyond our borders. Hysterical arm-waving is a poor contribution to the dialogue concerning how best to equip students for the duties of responsible citizenship.
ERIK C. NAFT
Amid the din, take the time to listen to each other
We have lost the art of listening.
We hear so much, we screen out talk we need to hear. When I walk into some homes, my greetings are met by sounds of the TV blaring, a CD playing in a bedroom, the dog barking and various odd and assorted electronic noises that can be attributed to a computer or other electronic gadgets. In the morning, my daughter, husband and I divide up the newspapers equitably, reading and discussing the events of our times and laughing at the comics.
Many of us do not process what little conversation gets through our ears and into our brains. This takes a little time, like maybe 3 to 5 seconds. Most people are not patient enough to think about what the person has said and formulate an appropriate answer. We end up "saying something off the top of our heads," which I'm sure as you have experienced does not really communicate what we wanted to say.
If you are reading or hearing this letter, try really listening today.
CELIA CHRISTMAN
Banksville
Sewickley
Robinson
Baldwin
Coraopolis
Oakland
Shadyside
Upper St. Clair