Property-tax Madness

Texas has 4 school districts. In my opinion the proliferation of school districts in Pennsylvania does nothing at all to improve education and nothing at all to facilitate local control. I believe that what it does do is create multiple oppurinities to steal public funds. It is just not possible to investigate each school district in Pennsylvania. There are not enough forensic accountants available. There is a very good series about PA school districts in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Property-tax Madness".

Posted on Sat, Jun. 14, 2008

Special Report
Property-tax Madness
By Anthony R. Wood
Inquirer Staff Writer
After 34 years living in a four-bedroom brick home on a leafy acre in Radnor Township, retirees Karl and Jean Dorschu wanted something smaller, something with less raking and snow shoveling, something less taxing, physically and financially.

They chose to stay in Delaware County, buying a $325,000 two-bedroom house in the Boothwyn section of Upper Chichester Township, 20 miles away.

There, they assumed, their property tax would be much lower than the $7,000 they paid in Radnor. Their new place was half the size and value, on one-fifth the acreage, in a middle-class community without Main Line gilt or top-drawer schools to support.

So much for logic.

After moving in, the Dorschus learned they'd be paying $8,500, or 21 percent more.

In the two years since, their bill has jumped above $9,500.

"If we had a top-notch school district, I wouldn't mind," said Karl Dorschu, 77, a former engineer.

In Radnor, where his three children were educated, 88 percent of the students go on to four-year colleges, compared with 38 percent in the Chichester School District. Radnor students rank among the region's highest in academic performance; Chichester's are in the lower echelon.

All things considered, his tax bill "doesn't make sense," he said. But he is certain of this much: "They're choking us homeowners to death."

Complaints about the property tax - that it's unfair, bewildering, exorbitant, pick a pejorative - may be nothing new. But their volume and intensity are.

The colonial-era system that provides most of the money for America's public schools and local governments is under unprecedented assault, with taxpayer protests, lawsuits or legislative overhauls rumbling through at least 20 states.

Pennsylvania is one.

The state is jigsawed into 3,134 local taxing authorities, including 501 school districts, 2,566 municipalities, and 67 counties - a patchwork among the most manifold in the nation. Here, the chaos and inequities wrought by a flawed, fragmented system are worsening as tax bills rise, the housing market falters, and the economy deteriorates.

An Inquirer analysis of 500,000 tax records in Philadelphia and the four Pennsylvania suburban counties has found wildly disparate property-tax rates that are widening the economic divide between have and have-not towns, and further balkanizing the region.
Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/special/19940504.html