After decades of weak collection efforts, property-tax delinquency has become an epidemic in Philadelphia. As of April 30, 2011, there were about 111,000 tax delinquent accounts in the city – nearly one out of every five properties. Collectively, they owe the city and school district $472 million in principal, penalties and interest.
Freelancer Patrick Kerkstra, a former Philadelphia Inquirer investigative reporter, worked with The Inquirer, Philly.com and Plan Philly to develop the data and the stories documenting the problem. Both PlanPhilly and The Inquirer contributed $2,500 apiece to match the Enterprise Reporting Award, once the amount of work involved became clear. Kerkstra’s reporting culminated in an extensive two-day report that began in the Sunday, Aug. 14, newspaper (including the Aug. 13 bulldog edition). The overall package consisted of two stories – one at 120 inches, another at 100 inches – with three sidebars, five data-packed graphics, a video and photos. The Inquirer’s print version took up three full inside pages in the Sunday paper plus a chunk of Page One and two pages in Monday’s edition.
“Projects, particularly investigative projects, take as long as they take. There are leads that can take weeks to sort out only to find that they are not germane … In this case, the story has been larger and more complicated than anticipated. The reporting hours that have gone into it absolutely dwarf the size of the award.”
– Patrick Kerkstra, freelance reporter
A key part of the project was a searchable map of delinquent properties, appearing on both Plan Philly and Philly.com: Plan Philly reported that the project bumped its site traffic to double its usual rate with readers spending an average of five minutes studying the map.
The AP rewrote the Sunday story and its versions were published on websites and in papers across Pennsylvania.
By the following Sunday, the city administration announced that it would increase the number of sheriff’s sales of delinquent properties to 600 by January 2012. By September, the state legislature began drafting legislation to set firmer requirements for cities to either collect taxes or foreclose on delinquent properties and put them up for sale.
Soon after the report was published, the William Penn Foundation made a $75,000 grant to PlanPhilly.com to support continued reporting on the issue. “The William Penn Foundation called PlanPhilly in for a meeting after the publication of the series and awarded us a $75,000 grant to continue reporting the tax-delinquency story. PlanPhilly published another segment in October and is collaborating with The Philadelphia Inquirer on a series of stories and data presentations that will take us into the summer of 2012,” PlanPhilly editor Matt Golas said.
Kerkstra urges more time for projects like his. “Projects, particularly investigative projects, take as long as they take. There are leads that can take weeks to sort out only to find that they are not germane … In this case, the story has been larger and more complicated than anticipated. The reporting hours that have gone into it absolutely dwarf the size of the award.”
