Editorial: Hempfield still has issues to address
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Hempfield Area School District’s residential tax assessment appeals program will be ending.
Eventually.
On Monday, the board voted 7-2 to discontinue the broadly criticized program that served as a back-door reassessment for properties with a $250,000 difference between fair market value and selling price, as calculated by district-hired law firm Andrews & Price.
That’s a good thing. There shouldn’t be a selective way of changing the math for some homeowners and not others.
But now what?
The district isn’t going ahead with more appeals in 2021, but those already under way are still being advanced, and even members of the school board are asking why.
“Just in talking to business leaders, elected officials and the residents of this community in the last year, I am strongly against it. I’m strongly against that, but also the unresolved appeals. I think that should be dismissed also,” said board member Jennifer Bretz.
Despite the critiques of the program going on for years, reversing gears doesn’t seem to have been done with much forethought. What is the virtue in continuing to defend a decision that has already been repealed?
At the same time, the district doesn’t know how it will replace the money the increased valuations would reap. Since 2015, more than $650,000 has flowed into district coffers, although in just 2019 and 2020, income has been offset by $144,500 in losses after residents appealed the appeals.
Taxes have gone up 2.21 mills since the 2014-15 school year with the additional money as part of the mix. Sonya Brajdic was one of the two dissenting votes. She pointed to upcoming budget talks as reasons to delay the move, but Paul Ward called that “sort of the end justifying the means.”
Brajdic and Ward are both right. So is board member Jeanne Smith, who said, “And who is going to pay all those taxes? All the other taxpayers.”
This issue has been looming, and a good plan for stopping all appeals should have been brought to the table along with ideas for replacing the money generated.
Maybe now that the deed is done, the district can spend some real time focusing on those aspects.