Council wary about tax hike for parks
Will property owners in the city receive a tax bill to fund the parks before 2020 is up? Not if City Council doesn’t act, and several members say there’s just no “appetite” for increasing taxes during a pandemic.
Voters narrowly agreed in November to raise property taxes by a half mill — which adds $50 to the owner’s tax bill for every $100,000 in property value — to fund the city’s parks.
The tax hike has yet to affect the public, as council has yet to create a trust fund for the money and legislate how to distribute it. Enabling legislation has been in committee since February.
“I have no intention of bringing it back up under my committee at least for the foreseeable future. A lot of people are hurting financially,” council President Theresa Kail-Smith said. “It’s not that I don’t understand the value of needing additional tax dollars, and that the city is under financial stress, but it’s like taking blood from a rock, especially when [constituents are] in their own financial crisis.”
Several of her fellow council members agreed.
“We’re hearing from people who say it’s been so long since they’ve had a paycheck and have not yet received [unemployment],” Councilwoman Deb Gross said. “... While those [financial relief] programs exist, that doesn’t mean the money is in people’s hands.”
“We’re going to have people who are going to have trouble paying mortgages, and you’re going to add an additional tax?” Councilman Corey O’Connor said. “Obviously, it’s
areferendum, but no time soon would I vote for it to be enacted.”
Ms. Kail-Smith and Ms. Gross have publicly opposed the parks tax, as has Councilman Anthony Coghill, who said he wants to further examine recommendations made by Controller Michael Lamb in a recent audit of the city’s nearly 60 agreements with the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy.
Mr. Lamb recommended that the city keep more transparent records with the nonprofit conservancy that petitioned for the tax increase with the support of Mayor Bill Peduto’s office.
The controller deferred questions to the Law Department regarding whether there is a deadline by which the tax will need to be enacted, but he said he has “never seen a situation where a referendum was basically ignored.”
“If they were to say, ‘Hey, times have changed and we don’t think this is advisable to move forward with tax increase right now,’ I don’t know that they have that authority,” Mr. Lamb said.
The city solicitor, Yvonne Hilton, said the Law Department is looking into the matter.
Councilman Ricky Burgess has publicly supported the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy’s plan to distribute the money according to an equitable formula. He said he supports collecting the tax “sooner rather than later so that the resources can start being invested into these parks so that when they come to their high peak season next year you have resources going into them.”
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, our residents have been using the parks more and more as safe places, and we need to make sure there’s enough safe place like that in all of our city, not just in the wealthy communities. The parks tax becomes a vehicle in some ways to make that a reality,” Mr. Burgess said.
He said he wants to work with the administration and fellow members “to enact the parks tax ... with its emphasis on equity.”
The mayor’s office maintains that “[t]he tax is a council matter and the administration is leaving it to them,” according to mayoral spokesman Timothy McNulty.
The conservancy maintains that “[i]nclusion of the parks tax in the 2021 City budget will sustain the quality role our parks play in the lives of all Pittsburghers — a goal envisioned by our mayor, our City Council, and our conservancy — at a time when parks have never been more important. We continue advocating for equitable park investment, and pledge to supply the city with whatever information and backing it requires to have thoughtful, productive conversations on parks tax usage,” according to conservancy spokesman John Pepper.