Recently, there was an article in the Erie Times-News regarding the tax revenue lost to tax-exempt properties: How much do Erie’s tax-exempt properties cost city government in lost revenues? If you’re familiar with our journey so far, you’ll recall that we called this out some time ago: Taxpayer Facts.
To summarize, Gannon is the largest tax-exempt property holder in the City of Erie. They also don’t pay a PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes). However, they do utilize city services such as police, fire, and (the all important at this time of year) snowplowing. UPMC, Allegheny Health Network, Sarah Reed, Methodist Towers, Church of the Covenant, and and the Alcanon Club pay PILOTs. Heck, even the Erie Housing Authority makes a payment in lieu of taxes. It’s interesting to note that since we’ve been looking into this since the beginning of this year, Gannon’s real estate holdings have increased from 51 properties to 99. If their realtor could take on that workload–and additional 48 properties, it would stand to reason that maybe with all those transactions, they could have found a different location for Project NepTWNE that didn’t take 3200 square feet of your Blasco Library.
Something else that’s interesting is that the criteria for non-profit 501c3 for income differs from the criteria for tax-exempt property. If you’d like to go down that rabbit hole: What are the five prongs that nonprofits must meet to earn tax-exempt status?
“If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all—except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.
~President John F. Kennedy
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