Councilors target low PILOT payments
Boston’s city councilors continue to train their fire on the city’s colleges, saying the esteemed — and tax-exempt — institutions continue to not pay enough.
“It’s critically important that as a council we hold the institutions that hold so much property around this city accountable,” atlarge Councilor Annissa EssaibiGeorge said during Wednesday’s council meeting.
At the first full meeting of the year and term, councilors introduced two measures aimed at revisiting the decade-old Payment in Lieu of Taxes — PILOT — agreement for property-taxexempt nonprofits. One from Essaibi-George and City Councilor Lydia Edwards is a proposed ordinance that would aim to create a task force to review the PILOT program, and an order from Councilor Michael Flaherty called for a hearing into the program. The councilors said these are complimentary.
“Our tax-exempt institutions must pay their fair share,” said Flaherty, an at-large councilor.
He stressed that the guidelines for how much the institutions — including colleges, hospitals and other nonprofits — have to pay are based on property values from 2009, which are almost certainly lower than today’s.
“It’s unacceptable that our institutions are making PILOT payments on 2009 values while our residents are making payments on 2020 values,” Flaherty said.
Nonprofits sign onto the PILOT program, which was most recently updated in 2011, but the guidelines are unenforceable — which several officials have said they might need to consider changing, as some institutions pay little or nothing.
“There’s aspects that should no longer be voluntary,” Edwards said during Wednesday’s meeting.
The city last year requested a total of $109.1 million from nonprofits — and received just $34.2 million in cash. Boston also counts an additional $52.5 million in what the various institutions filed as “community benefits.”
The city in 2019 requested educational institutions to give $57.3 million, according to data, resulting in $14.6 million in cash plus $25.9 credited as community benefits under the PILOT. Several officials have taken aim at “community benefits” as being too nebulous.
PILOT issues have been an early focus for the council. President Kim Janey last week said PILOT reform is one of her top priorities as she begins her twoyear term leading the council, and she’s creating a committee specifically to focus on PILOT issues. That’s the likely destination for future hearings on both of the bills introduced Wednesday, though the council committees aren’t yet formalized.
Also, officials and and activists in Roxbury, which Janey represents, told the Herald last week their community is feeling the pinch from Northeastern University’s continuous high-end development and scant community benefits, as the university last year paid 65% of the $11.4 million requested.