Caught in a battle to fund public education, owners of local apartment complexes are feeling the heat as school district business managers extract more revenue from commercial property owners across the region.

In a cover story in last week’s Philadelphia Business Journal, reporter Natalie Kostelni tells the story of the conflict that arose when the Downingtown Area School District “spot assessed” two Downingtown apartment complexes owned by Westover Cos. of King of Prussia.

Spot assessment is the practice of targeted reassessment of specific properties by school districts or municipalities.  Spot assessments usually result in high market assessment of the targeted property and this higher annual tax payment by the property owner.

According to the PBJ story, “hamstrung from raising funds through other means and continuously facing funding cuts,” area school districts are turning to spot assessments as a quick way to bring more money into their district’s coffers.

Area business managers are targeting commercial property owners including business parks, hotels, malls and especially apartment complexes.

From the school district’s point of view its all about the leveling the playing field and asking property owners to pay their fair share on services delivered to families living in each apartment unit.

Downingtown’s spot assessment of two Westover properties, one with 108 apartments and the second with 93 units, increased the fair market value of each property by over $1 million and resulted in “roughly $53,000 in annual tax revenue for [Downingtown].”

Property owners see spot assessments as discriminating and have banded together to address what they see as unequal targeting of their properties over other similarly under-assessed real estate.

Guntram Weissenberger, CEO of Westover, summed up property owner’s argument. “If you choose our properties and a couple of others, what happens to uniformity if everyone else gets to stay with their [existing] level of assessment,” asked Weissenberger.

“Its an issue that won’t go away anytime soon and will likely get more contentious,” reports Kostelni.

Read the entire Philadelphia Business Journal spot assessment story including Downingtown School District’s aggressive reassessment campaign here.