Tax Abatement For New Construction

A friend of mine from Philadelphia told me the other day that the housing stock was in a horrible decline a few years back and nobody was building. What did they do? They decided to offer a 10 year abatement for taxes for new construction since 1997. It has been a huge success in the Philadelphie. Read here for more information.

Maybe the City of Worcester should consider the same?

City Council Meeting Tuesday

9e) There is an order by Councilor Haller looking to convert non-owner occupied dwellings to the commercial rate.

That would mean that a three decker that does not have an owner-occupant would then see their taxes doube (12.10 per thousand to 25.32 per thousand). Obviously I am a landlord of non-owner occupied dwellings and am biased against this, but let me ask you this what do you think I will do if this passes? I would most likely go up on my rent.

Putting that aside if you have two identical three deckers side by side, why should one pay double the taxes. I know the arguement that owner-occupied houses stabilize a neighborhood, but I have had some tenants ten years and they stabilize a neighborhood as much as any owner-occupied house.


9f) There is another order by Councilor Haller looking to charge a "user fee" for city employees who do not reside in the City of Worcester.

I agree that we should encourage people to live in the City of Worcester, but should we penalize people who do not want to live in the City of Worcester? I whole-heartedly disagree with this order also. Rather then penalize city employees, who do not reside in the City of Worcester, lets pick targeted areas and encourage city employees to live here by offering a rebate on their taxes?


Lastly how would the City of Worcester enforce either of these orders? More importantly the last thing we need to do is pit owner-occupied dwellings versus owner-occupied dwellings, it is bad enough that we already have commercial and residential dual rates.

Bill

Simple Math

Do the math:

Councilor Haller votes herself an 84% payraise.

+

The City of Worcester faces a $23 million shortfall.

+

The City will shutter all pools.

=

Time for Lynne Simonds to represent District 4, she will use the pay raise to fund desparately needed projects in District 4.

Progress on homelessness on horizon

There has been a lot of momentum on homelessness in the city, more than I can recall in the past decade. There is the CHAIN Initiative, which promises to spend a year investigating how to "move the needle" on chronis homelessness in the City, and then to implement a pilot strategy. There is the new City Manager's Task Force on homelessness, which will hopefully create a workable blueprint to tackle the issue as well.

I am cautiously optimistic that we may have momentum on the issue that will have real results.

This is extremely important because homelessness is imbedded deeply in the fabric of poverty of District 4. New energy and ideas are needed to galvanize an actionable plan to turn around the lack of housing in the district, and the accompanying tragedies of inner city homelessness.

Lynne has always been a champion of the dispossessed in the city, and I truly believe that she will represent the broad constiuency of district 4, from the tax-paying homeowner to the destitute homeless person. We need a workable blueprint to get the ball rolling.

Database

We are always working on our database. If anyone would like to be kept abreast of events occurring in the Simonds campaign over the next six months, send me an e-mail at Bill@AdvantageBenefits.com.

We will then enter your name to regular e-mail updates.