Pittsburgh Public Schools authorizes its attorney to sue Allegheny County to force a countywide property reassessment

Pittsburgh Public Schools officials have authorized their solicitor to sue Allegheny County in order to undergo a countywide property reassessment.

But Solicitor Ira Weiss hopes a simple letter to county officials will get the conversation going and a formal legal filing with the Court of Common Pleas will not be necessary.

“The next step is to communicate with the county Executive (Sara Innamorato) and the county solicitor a request to immediately order a reassessment,” Weiss said shortly after Wednesday night’s PPS board meeting. “We’re stating all the reasons in the letter and will give her a reasonable time to consider it and reply before we file the lawsuit. There is no deadline (to file).”

Allegheny County’s last reassessment was in 2012.

The school board approved filing the lawsuit 8-0. Board member Tracey Reed was absent.

Board president Gene Walker said the issue was discussed last week, and it was good to see everyone in support of the action.

“We are obviously in a very serious budget crisis right now with reduced revenue, decreasing enrollment in our schools,” Walker said. “And the fact that there hasn’t been a countywide reassessment (in years) is kind of exacerbating some of these issues.

“At this point, it’s important for us to really pull on all of our levers of influence to make sure that we have an opportunity to stabilize our finances as best as possible.”

No board members commented on the issue during the meeting.

One of the reasons expected to be listed in Weiss’ letter is the steep drop in property tax revenue Pittsburgh Public and other school districts in the county are experiencing.

Weiss said Pittsburgh Public Schools has had to pay out $10 million in real estate tax refunds, and may have to pay out another $10 million by the end of the school year due to what he called an unfair and broken system.

“The assessments do not reflect the market value of these properties,” he said. “That results in an unfair and illegal system where those at the top of the scale with higher value properties pay less than they should because those properties aren’t valued at their real value.

“Property owners at the lower end of the scale pay more than they should because their properties don’t reflect the declining nature of their value.

”The Constitution of Pennsylvania requires uniformity. There is a lack of uniformity (in this system). The county executive inherited a bad, broken system. We’re asking her to take the right step to address it, which is ordering a reassessment.”

In 2021, Allegheny County was using a common level ratio of 81.1% — meaning that a property seeing an appeal would have its assessment changed to about 81% of its fair market value. A house worth reassessed at $100,000, for instance, would pay taxes on only $81,100.

After a successful lawsuit brought by homeowners, a judge ruled to reduce the common level ratio from 81.1% to 63.5% in 2022, and then down to 54.5% in 2023, meaning owners of the same $100,000 house in the previous example would pay taxes on only $54,500 of its value.

According to the school board’s resolution authorizing the lawsuit, high-value properties in Pittsburgh that have maintained or lost value since the 2012 are now “receiving artificially low assessments” because of successful appeals and application of the current common level ratio.

“The failure to reassess has resulted in higher valued property assessments not reflecting the appreciation in value over time and lower valued property assessments not reflecting the decline in value over time,” the resolution reads.

The drop in the ratio resulted in multiple major commercial property owners, including owners of some of Downtown’s tallest buildings, appealing their property values and subsequently lowering the amount of property taxes they have to pay.

Weiss said his firm successfully filed a lawsuit in 2010 on behalf of an Allegheny County property owner, and that helped spark the 2012 assessments.

“Nothing’s been done since then,” he said. “I am confident, based upon the facts that we know about the current system and the holding of the court in the prior case, that we will prevail in the Court of Common Pleas.”

Weiss said Pittsburgh Public Schools plans to reach out to other municipalities and school districts to seek their participation in the lawsuit.

“All the school districts and municipalities are in the same boat here,” he said. “They are all suffering because of this system. And, frankly, many taxpayers are too because they are paying more than they should. A broken system doesn’t help anybody.”

Walker hopes families hear the message sent by the board with this resolution.

“I think the big message is that we have a really tough job ahead of us,” he said. “It’s going to take a number of steps to try to resolve it, and this is one of them.”

Few people attended Wednesday’s school board meeting and no one commented.

The next board meeting is an educational committee meeting 5:30 p.m. April 3 at 341 S. Bellefield Ave.