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Wednesday, January 01, 2003

By Timothy McNulty, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

An Allegheny County government board certified the property values used to calculate 2003 tax bills yesterday, over the objections of a Democratic county councilman.

The county's overall taxable property value is decreasing 3.5 percent, to $61 billion. The decrease is due to assessment appeals and court decisions, county officials said.

Councilman Rick Schwartz, one of three members of the county's Property Assessment Oversight Board, called for yesterday's vote to be delayed since he did not receive the final, certified values until Monday afternoon.

He was overruled by board Chairman George Whitmer and the third board member, financier Robert Stephenson. They voted in favor of the property values, with Schwartz abstaining.

Yesterday was Stephenson's last day on the board, after his reappointment was rejected by County Council Democrats. Whitmer, a senior vice president at PNC Financial Services Group and former aide to Mayors Richard Caliguiri and Sophie Masloff, moved up the certification vote to yesterday to make sure he had the two majority votes needed to certify the property values.

Whitmer said the vote was necessary to let the county and municipal governments get 2003 property tax bills ready. Schwartz said a delay was necessary to study the property values, make sure they were correct and "restore people's confidence" in the assessments.

The county has until the middle of this month to approve the values. If needed, it could hold off the 2003 certification even longer, Schwartz said, by using the existing 2002 property values, adjusted to include assessment appeals, to issue tax bills.

"We have until the 15th. We are not under a deadline, and to restore the public's confidence [in assessments], we don't need to do this at a last-second meeting," Schwartz said.

Whitmer, chairing the meeting over the telephone, rejected Schwartz's call for a delay, saying municipalities and school districts had to get their final, certified property values to know their new real estate tax bases.

After the session Schwartz issued a statement calling the meeting disgusting, a political sham and a travesty. He said he was the only oversight board member to question the values, that the two other members are a "rubber stamp," and that he will introduce legislation this month to abolish the board.

County Chief Executive Jim Roddey, a Republican, also plans to introduce legislation. His would expand the board by two more members, one appointed by the chief executive and one by council.

The values certified yesterday were not for individual properties, and just because the county's overall property value is going down does not mean taxes are going down the same amount. The numbers certified are overall values for the entire county and for each of its municipalities.

The values will be used by taxing bodies to issue their yearly property tax bills and set budgets. The county's bills are to be issued next month by Treasurer John Weinstein.

Since properties were not reassessed countywide this year, tax bills for most property owners will not change, unless their market values were changed through appeals or their local governments altered their property tax rates. The county's 2003 property tax rate is 4.69 mills, the same as last year.

The county's overall property value for 2003 is $61 billion, down from $63.3 billion in 2002. Since about $2 billion of that is untaxable -- from the $10,000 taken off each home's value by the homestead exemption -- the county's overall value for accounting purposes is closer to $59 billion. That is a 7 percent drop from 2002.

According to a review county administrative services Director Norm Mekkelsen gave the board, there is an additional $2 billion in losses from appeals and about $1.75 billion in losses from assessment-related court decisions.

The losses were tempered by a $1.5 billion increase in property values from new construction and various property changes and upgrades.

In the city of Pittsburgh, overall taxable property values dropped about 7 percent, from $14.7 billion to $13.6 billion.

The greatest percentage losses for other municipalities were Trafford's 21.79 percent, from $2.6 million to $2 million, and Sewickley's 13.76 percent drop, from $374 million to $323 million. The biggest percentage increases were Homestead's 7.36 percent jump, from $128 million to $137 million, and Wilmerding's 6.7 percent, from $47 million to $50 million.

In early 2004, Mekkelsen said, the county will issue property values for 2004 and 2005 to free up time to do the next countywide reassessments, which are due in 2006. The new values will be preliminarily issued in 2005.