December 20, 2010

Proof?

Anonymous, not sure if there is any "proof"per say that anyone can provide other then looking at what has happened to our commercial base since the inception of the dual tax rates in 1984.    Commerical base represented approximately 35% of the property tax revenue in 1984 not it is approximately 18%.

4 comments:

Jahn said...

Using tax revenue maybe not be the best metric for measuirng the decline in Comm property in Worc.

That current 18% figure on your bar graph would be more like 6% if Worc's comm. property wasnt taxed at 3x the residential rate, resulting in 3x more tax revenue....3x being approximate.

I think a better measuring tool would be the amt of comm. property on sq. ft basis... say 30 years ago vs. today and then compare that to a measure of sq ft'age (or units) of residentail property 30 yrs ago vs. today. I think that would really drive home the point of the decline in our commercial base. ALso the growth in non profit owned real estate too.

zed said...

What about the shrinking industrial base that every American city lost to off-shore manufacturing in the last 2+ decades? Attribution to tax rate only is a bogus argument.

Bill Randell said...

Zed:

We all know that there are alot more factors then the tax rate that contributed to the erosion of the commercial tax base.

Problem is how do we get commercial enterprise back into the City of Worcester when they are looking at these rates.

Problem is if we keep doing what we are doing the Commercial tax base will be under 10% of the total revenues in ten years. What will the tax bills look like then, even if we keep voting the lowest residential rate eevry eyar.

Bill

Jahn said...

BIll, are we sure thats graph of comm property tax revenue or is it a graph of some other measure of comm. property in Worcester......like sq ft????????