Dec 21, 2017 3 min read

Washington City Council voted Thursday to increase property taxes on land and buildings by 1.5 mills each to close a deficit of hundreds of thousands of dollars in next year’s budget.

Councilman Joe Manning said those increases will generate $817,131 next year. The increases translate into an additional $150 in taxes for every $100,000 of assessed value of land parcels and buildings, which are taxed separately.

“We’ve tried to keep it as low as we possibly could, bearing in mind that we didn’t want to burden any of the taxpayers,” Manning said.

He called the move the first significant increase in almost a decade, adding the last one was eight years ago.

Manning, Councilman Ken Westcott, Councilwoman Monda Williams and Mayor Scott Putnam voted to approve the budget, which includes $14.15 million in projected expenditures and an equal amount of anticipated revenue. Williams cast the sole dissenting vote on the tax resolution.

A previous budget proposal officials discussed last month showed expenses outstripping revenue by $387,000 next year.

In the past, “we’ve cut services, in lieu of raising taxes,” said Putnam. “So at this point, we’re down to the bare bones on all our spending, the maintenance of streets, the paving, garbage pickup, everything is cut down to right next to nothing. We need to do something to keep up with the rising prices.”

Officials cited the partial collapse of a three-story apartment building at 15 N. Main St. on July 12 as one reason for the unexpected costs the city has to cover.

“We were looking at some unanticipated expenditures for this year. For example, the building collapse really threw out of kilter our overtime budget for all of our first responders,” Manning said. “We had some legal opinions that didn’t go our way, and so we found ourselves in a position where we had to find some additional revenue.”

Demolition of the North Main structure was handled by Allegheny Crane Rental of Pittsburgh. The city hopes to pay the company its more than $1.1 million bill with insurance money from the building’s owners, but that case is in litigation.

The new real estate tax rates will be 34.21 mills for land and 3.58 mills for buildings.

Officials also unanimously approved a reduction in taxes under Act 205 – which allows some municipalities to increase their earned income tax rates to shore up distressed pension systems. The rate will fall from 1.63 percent to 1.4 percent on wages of people working in the city.

“We got to this point where our pensions are close to being fully funded, and, gratefully, we were able to lower that tax on the citizens, and that will put additional money in their pockets and their paychecks,” Manning said.