UniverCity Partnership
A few years back I was on a task force that looked into the PILOT headed by Rep Leary. We all realized that there was very little the City could not legally to impose a property tax, but that there were other options.
The key to the whole task force was that Representative Leary, who did an excellent job, brought people in from CEO for Cities who brought in reports on how other cities work with their non-profits, in particular Pittsburgh. After a few months, we came out with a really good report on how we could maximize the assets (monetary and intellectual) on the non-profits in the the City of Worcester. Amongst the many recommendations was that we should have an agency dedicated solely to these efforts.
Recently I have read about the PILOT issue being brought up again by some of the councilors. As a result I decided to check out the agency that was created by our task force the UniverCity Partnership. I got to tell you that I was rather disappointed. Although I have not heard of many of our recommendations being implemented, I was hoping that I have read something different. Quick can anyone tell me who heads this Partnership??? If you want, you can check out the report here.
If you want to see how this is suppose to be working check out the City of Pittsburgh's University Partnership or the Providence Plan. Instead of going down the PILOT road again, maybe we should reconvene the task force and take a look at our original recommendations and see how we have done so far?
posted by Bill Randell @ 5:58 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I have often wondered if non profits in all the other states do not have to pay property taxes either.
I heard it is governed by state law so it could vary from state to state. I guess PA and RI are the same as Massachusetts though.
Anonymous:
I have no idea how it goes from State to State, but I can tell you that the City of Worcester has no power to enforce a property tax on non-profits. In other words the City Council could approve a $2.00 per thousand rate on non-profit real estate, send a bill and not be able to do a dam thing when the bill goes unpaid.
The whole point of the task force, once realizing this, was try to an focus the buying of the colleges and the intellectual capacity of the non-profits back into the City of Worcester.. There were great recommendations and I have not seen them enacted.
The other day I e-mailed former State Rep Leary, and the head of the task force, to ask him to reconvene our group.
Bill
PS Where is Armand Carriere??
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