City Councilman David Oh: This Is a Truly Terrible Salad Recipe

Last week we reported that City Council–having repeatedly asked the mayor and the Office of Property Assessment to detail how it came up with the new property assessments–finally got an answer in the form of a 15-page document (embedded below). Chief tax assessor Richie McKeithen warned Council that it wouldn’t make sense to anyone other than…well, him, maybe. But it seems some Council members read it anyway, including David Oh, who feels it’s incomplete.

From NewsWorks:

“It’s kind of like providing a recipe on making a salad, and generally saying ‘you chop up some vegetables, you mix em together and throw some dressing on it.'” said Oh. “You can’t duplicate that. We need to be able to verify what was done in order to verify it’s within acceptable standards of assessments.”

So Council is now authorized to issue a subpoena to get all the details–methodology, sample set, the whole recipe. Imagine how complex!

• Property Assessment Methodology That No One Except Richie McKeithen Can Understand
• Philly City Council approves subpoena for a peek behind property tax assessments [NewsWorks]