Property taxes ruining the American Dream

Attempts to eliminate Pennsylvania property taxes have been talked about forever, but no action so far.

Chris Onesti thought he had bought into the American dream.

It is fast turning into a nightmare.

Onesti bought a home in the Drexel Hill section of Upper Darby Township, Delaware County. His story is just one of many like it in this part of Pennsylvania.

He and his neighbors, like their counterparts in Montgomery and Chester counties, bite their fingernails each year as they await that annual greeting card from the school district — their property tax bill.

Onesti believes rising school taxes are driving down the value of homes in his neighborhood. The home he bought on a 6,000-square-foot lot a few years back for $350,000 is now worth considerably less, in part because of school tax tabs that now are running north of $10,000 a year.

Residents now find themselves trapped in their homes, paying the mortgage and taxes while seeing a potential escape route suddenly turn into a dead end when they realize they can no longer get the price that they paid for their homes.

Welcome to the long-running dilemma of the home owner across much of Pennsylvania. This is what happens when you bankroll the state’s education system on the backs of property owners — and their homes.

The situation is even more acute just down the road in the William Penn School District. School officials there raised taxes by another 2.2 percent to raise another $1.1 million.

In both William Penn and Upper Darby, part of what is in play is a struggling economy and tax base that is slowly strangling local school districts.

The truth is a tax hike in Darby Borough, Lansdowne, Clifton Heights or Upper Darby does not raise as much money as a tax hike in more well-to-do districts just a few miles away.

Change the school district name — Coatesville, Pottstown, Norristown, North Penn — and the same thing is happening.

The tax burden is weighing down homeowners.

The result is kids being penalized, literally getting less education bang for their buck, for no other reason than their zip code.

An unfortunate byproduct of the education funding dilemma is pitting one needy district against another.

It did not escape notice in William Penn that local legislators managed to find another $3.5 million for Upper Darby.

William Penn Superintendent Jane Ann Harbert noticed.

“To me, that should’ve never happened,” Harbert said of the additional funding for Upper Darby. “All money should’ve run through the fair funding formula.”

Ah, the fair funding formula. It was put in place by a bipartisan panel in the Legislature a few years back to evaluate districts based on wealth, number of children who live in poverty, the ability of the district to raise funds through its tax base, and other factors. Bottom line was that more money was supposed to be directed to those with the greatest need.

Unfortunately, first it was shelved by then Gov. Tom Corbett, who said the state couldn’t afford it. It has since been revived, but only for new money being distributed to school districts.

A group of parents across the state led by a family from William Penn is still awaiting their day in court to argue that Pennsylvania is failing in its constitutional mandate to offer every one of its children an equal education.

A big part of this equation is the state’s insistence on using local property taxes as the backbone of education funding. It doesn’t help that the state routinely in recent years has failed to live up to its mandate of funding 50 percent of the tab.

Gov. Tom Wolf and the Legislature were able to increase education funding this year, even while again eschewing any of the tax hikes the Democratic governor has sought in his first three years to boost education funding.

Attempts to kill off the property tax have been talked about forever, but the property tax is still here.

The problem is that it’s easy to kill off a hated tax. It’s a lot more difficult to replace that revenue. So far none of the alternatives have added up.

In the meantime the American Dream of home ownership in many places is turning into the American nightmare.