Assessments Show 46 Percent Hike In Overall Value Of City Residential Property
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- A hearing was held today over the progress of the property reassessments that have been stirring controversy and causing much anger among residents across Allegheny County this week.
The value of commercial properties has not been mailed out yet, and those commercial properties will go a long way to determining what the tax rate is going to be.
As far as residential properties, people in Pittsburgh and Mount Oliver have gotten their mailings. But the rest of the county will not get their reassessments until March.
The reassessments come under the order of Judge R. Stanton Wettick of the Common Pleas Court after a lawsuit filed by school districts and individuals claimed that the old assessments tax lower value properties too high and higher value properties too low.
Perhaps the biggest news to come out of this morning's hearing was that the new assessment shows a 46 percent increase in the overall value of residential property in Pittsburgh.
The judge says that will likely mean that anyone whose property values went up by less than a third will pay less in property taxes than they are paying now.
The attorney for Pittsburgh schools says people, and particularly politicians, should wait until the tax bills come out before they complain so publicly.
"Wonder to whom these elected officials are pandering with this talk this week," Ira Weiss, the Pittsburgh School Solicitor, said. "They ought to let the process go, let's see what the millage is and people will see that it is nowhere near as dire as they are being told."
Click the link below for a full interview with Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl on the reassessments:
So far, more than 4,000 people have filed appeals.
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