Full and original article posted on Worcester Magazine
The homeowners appear to be gaining power, as for the second year in a row, the City Council shifted responsibility for the city’s property tax fulfillment to businesses – this time with a wider margin of victory. The impact for everyone will be lessened, though, by a budget maneuver that will alter previously conservative projections from another revenue stream, saving the city’s taxpayers, collectively, nearly a half-million dollars this year.
Tax classification in Worcester is a contentious affair, under the city’s “split rate” system, where commercial property is taxed at a different, higher rate than residential property. The City Council has the power to divvy up the responsibility in hundreds of different permutations, and the process pits homeowners and businesses against each other annually as each makes the case they are overburdened by high taxes.
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