A recent ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has created a windfall for most retirement communities in the state. Prior to the ruling, retirement communities were exempt from real estate taxes on property used for assisted living and nursing care facilities. Property devoted to independent living facilities was subject to such taxes. The court decided that the exemption was to be applied at the institutional level – not parcel by parcel. Thus if a retirement community was deemed to be a (C)ontinuing (C)are (R)etirement (C)ommunity, all of its property should be exempt from real estate taxes. The exemption is not automatic – CCRCs must apply for it. Naturally retirement communities all over the state began filing for exemption. In the Lancaster area, one such community made headlines when it won approval to pay the taxing authorities an annual $400,000 payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) instead of the $900,000 it had been ...
My alarm clock goes off every morning at eight, except for the few times when I have a breakfast date. Usually I wake up about an hour before that, or at least I partly wake up. It is important that I remain in a “not quite awake but not quite asleep” state, because I consider that time as the germination period for whatever seeds happen to have blown into my head.