3 School Districts Claim Tax Burden’s Too Heavy for Delaware County Residential Property Owners

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This map from the Keystone Research Center’s study illustrates how high property taxes as a share of household income is a problem mostly in Eastern Pennsylvania.

The current reassessment of Delaware County property taxes places too much of a burden on residential property owners, claim three school districts, writes Kathleen E. Carey for the Daily Times.

Marple Newtown, Radnor Township and Springfield school boards declared that the new 2021 assessments are an “unfair and inequitable shift” of the real estate tax bill to residents.

They asked their solicitors to appeal “significantly undervalued” assessments in their communities.

The reassessments, conducted by Tyler Technologies, fulfill a Common Pleas Court order from 2017 stemming from an assessment appeal case in an effort to distribute the tax burden more fairly.

But Marple Newtown School Board President Matthew Bilker said an analysis showed the tax burden for its residential property owners shifted from 78.99 percent to 80.91 percent.

Similar shifts were reported in Radnor and Springfield.

Delaware County Councilwoman Christine Reuther sympathized but said only Tyler, the Board of Assessment Appeals and the courts can alter the valuations.

“There is a process in the Pennsylvania County Consolidated Assessment statute for challenges to the county wide reassessment methodology and we would expect any party that wants to raise that kind of objection to follow that process,” she said.

Read more about the tax reassessments here.

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