READING, Pa. \u2013 Reading City Council at its Committee of the Whole meeting Monday heard a request from representatives of Iglesia Pentecostal Un Nuevo Comienzo Inc., asking council to exonerate outstanding city property taxes from 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n
Attorney Stephen Welz, representing the church, explained that Iglesia Pentecostal purchased the former Grace Lutheran Church building at 45 S. 11th\u00a0St., as well as its accessory properties at: 43 S. 11th St., 33 11th St., 1116 Little Cherry St., 22 Little Wunder St., 1128 Little Cherry St. and 1146 Perkiomen Ave.<\/p>\n
Welz said that even though the properties were transferred from one tax-exempt entity to another, the tax exemption did not automatically transfer.<\/p>\n
While the church has now been approved for tax exemption, it still had to deal with the property taxes from 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n
Welz said Pastor Luis Santos and his congregation acquired all the properties to use for its expanding ministries.<\/p>\n
When questioned by council, Santos said there is no plan to sell any of the properties belonging to the church.<\/p>\n
Later in the evening, during the regular council meeting, council voted to approve a resolution to exonerate the taxes.<\/p>\n
The resolution stated that the city was exonerating $71,044, but council Solicitor Michael Gombar said he believed that number was inaccurate as it may have included all property taxes, including the school taxes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 Reading City Council at its Committee of the Whole meeting Monday heard a request from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114458,114457,114459,1093,18524,128,1095,130,129,114460],"class_list":["post-271821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-grace-lutheran-church","tag-iglesia-pentecostal-un-nuevo-comienzo-inc","tag-luis-santos","tag-michael-gombar","tag-property-tax","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-council","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-stephen-welz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}