A judge yesterday asked Allegheny County officials to postpone a $200,000 mailing of certified 2006 property assessments until after he has a chance to rule on a lawsuit against the county.
Last week, the Sto-Rox School District and a Franklin Park homeowner sued the county to block County Chief Executive Dan Onorato's proposal to put a cap on assessment increases.
Common Pleas Judge R. Stanton Wettick Jr. scheduled a hearing for May 10.
County officials had hoped to start mailing out next year's values by the end of the month, but Wettick said the county should wait a few more weeks to avoid having to do a costly second mailing if he rules against the cap.
Since the beginning of the year, this is the third time the county has postponed sending out the 2006 values.
In February, Onorato announced that the new values would hit property owners across the county with an average increase of almost 20 percent. He proposed placing each of the county's approximately 550,000 properties in one of six categories: decrease, no change, and increase of 1, 2, 3, or 4 percent. County Council approved the cap.
But the cap's critics have argued that it is not uniform -- in violation of the Pennsylvania Constitution -- and would unfairly burden poorer school districts and municipalities that need to collect revenue from properties with climbing assessment values to keep their budgets from falling.
When County Council approved the assessment cap last month, it pushed the deadline to file an appeal back to May 31.
Onorato said yesterday that the county likely will change that deadline again once the 2006 values are sent to property owners.
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