Williamsport’s government has too much property

After years of inflation inflicted upon household budgets across our nation and in our communities, we find the city’s decision to increase real estate taxes to be troubling. While we appreciate that the tax increase could’ve been even larger and even more burdensome, we fear a 0.33-mill tax increase will still pose frustrations and worries for many families and businesses in Williamsport.

One remark made in council’s deliberations was particularly vexing — the unfortunately true observation that many properties in Williamsport, perhaps as high as 40% of parcels are exempt from real estate taxes and the distortions that creates in our city’s tax base.

Often when this concern is noted, the conversation dwells on colleges and hospitals. But today we want to acknowledge first that our colleges and hospitals create jobs, contributing to our communities’ and state’s tax base in other ways, and provide vital services.

Second, our local governments are themselves among the tax-exempt property owners that shift the burdens of our property taxes onto the families and businesses that are their neighbors.

Throughout the years-long process of condemning and vacating the City Hall at 245 W. Fourth St., our city’s administrative functions have been conducted at other properties either owned by the city government outright or by other governmental agencies closely tied to city government.

What has, in our view, not received nearly enough attention is that, in effect, our city of about 27,400 has enough administrative office space to not only house each department and bureau, but enough for each and every bureau and office and department to have “back-up space.”

We believe that is unacceptably excessive.

We continue to believe that the city has, for years, neglected transparent planning for how to address the condemned City Hall building.

We remain open to the possibility that it should be sold, if someone, years later, wants to actually make a detailed case for how that can be accomplished. We remain open to the possibility that it should be renovated and the “back-up offices” in use “temporarily” should be sold instead — if the advocates for that historic building can make the detailed case for that course of action.

What we are still confident about is that the city’s taxpayers deserve more details and what we are increasingly confident about is that the city’s agencies do not need this much tax-exempt real estate.