Opinion ID: 2276578
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Lincoln Realty II and Nine Penn Center

Text: Lincoln Realty II and Nine Penn Center filed assessment appeals before their five-year abatement periods had expired. Even so, Appellants maintain that their appeals were untimely. From the options available to it under LERTA, the City Council chose to authorize an exemption in the amount of that portion of the additional assessment attributable to the actual cost of improvements, Phila. Code § 19-1303(3)(D)(1)(a), such exemption to commence at a specified date and to continue for five years, see Phila. Code § 19-1303(3)(D)(2)(a). Notably, such an exemption was to be awarded to an eligible taxpayer as a five-year whole; once the initial application was approved, the taxpayer was not required to reapply annually. [18] The duration and projected cost of these exemptions would necessarily have been incorporated into the City's revenue projections. To allow a taxpayer to accept an exemption on the terms offered and then, after having received all or part of the promised benefits, to assert that the exemption should have been greater, would undermine the salutary goal, noted earlier, of ensuring the reliability of a municipality's revenue projections and, in consequence, its ability to provide the services that its residents need and expect. Moreover, enforcing a requirement of timely appeal eliminates the questionable practice of judicial reformation of a tax exemption on terms never contemplated by the municipality, as occurred in the present case. See supra note 10. See generally Man O'War Racing Ass'n v. State Horse Racing Comm'n, 433 Pa. 432, 441, 250 A.2d 172, 176 (1969) (recognizing that the public interest can play a role in determining whether an appeal must lie). Here, it was the Board's letter decisions which first informed Taxpayers of the fact that their applications for exemptions had been granted, and of the terms, including the beginning and ending dates, of those exemptions. Appellants maintain that the letter decisions therefore constituted the Board's adjudications with respect to the periods of tax abatement awarded to Taxpayers, so that, if Taxpayers intended to challenge the abatement periods, they were required by the Local Agency Law to appeal from the letter decisions. [19] See generally Wilson Townhouses, Sections I and II v. Berks County Bd. of Assessment Appeals, 112 Pa.Cmwlth. 498, 500, 535 A.2d 1226, 1227 (stating the principle that an appeal from a decision of a tax assessment board must be filed within 30 days of the entry of the board's order), appeal denied, 519 Pa. 670, 548 A.2d 259 (1988). Title 2 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, which governs administrative law and procedure, defines adjudication as [a]ny final order, decree, decision, determination or ruling by an agency affecting personal or property rights, privileges, immunities, duties, liabilities or obligations.... [20] 2 Pa.C.S. § 101; see also Hardee's Food Systems, Inc. v. Department of Transp., 495 Pa. 514, 520, 434 A.2d 1209, 1212 (1981) (observing that a decision of specific application, clearly affecting property rights, is unquestionably an adjudication). It is beyond dispute that the Board's initial decisions affected Taxpayers' property rights and obligation to pay local real estate taxes. See supra note 3. Insofar as the effect on property rights is concerned, the Board's decisions to grant five years of property tax abatements were just as much adjudications as, for example, the Department of Transportation's denial of a restaurant's application for permits to construct driveways from its property to a state highway, see Hardee's, 495 Pa. at 520, 434 A.2d at 1212; the Department of Banking's denial of an application to open a branch bank, see Conestoga Nat'l Bank of Lancaster v. Patterson, 442 Pa. 289, 298, 275 A.2d 6, 11 (1971); or a decision of the State Horse Racing Commission to grant licenses to certain applicants and not others, see Man O' War, 433 Pa. at 441, 250 A.2d at 176. While Taxpayers contend that they were not required to appeal the Board's letter decisions because those decisions, not having been preceded by notice and a hearing, were not valid adjudications, the need for such due process protections seems questionable given that the Board simply awarded Taxpayers the exemptions that they had requested, and as to which there was no dispute that they were entitled under Phila. Code § 19-1303(3)(D)(2)(a) as then written. Moreover, even if the Board's letter decisions were not valid adjudications which triggered Taxpayers' obligation to appeal, those decisions were followed in each case by the first of Taxpayers' assessment notices to reflect the LERTA exemption. [21] Pursuant to the First Class County Assessment Law, each taxpayer could have filed an appeal from such notice, as did the taxpayer in MacDonald, Illig, and by that means effected a challenge to the commencement date of the exemptions. None of the taxpayers did so. [22] Taxpayers' failure to appeal from the first of the annual assessment notices, at the latest, renders their subsequent appeals untimely and deprives this and the lower courts of jurisdiction to grant the relief requested in those appeals. Accordingly, the order of the Commonwealth Court reversing the order of the Court of Common Pleas (Levin, J.) dated October 7, 1997, is reversed. Justice NEWMAN did not participate in the consideration or decision of this case.