Upper Darby and Radnor sit just a few miles apart in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. One is working-class. The other is one of the wealthiest communities in America. Yet the family in Upper Darby pays roughly twice the effective property-tax rate of their neighbor in Radnor \u2014 despite earning less than half as much.<\/p>\n
That single fact exposes the quiet cruelty baked into how Pennsylvania funds schools and local government.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the math:<\/p>\n
Median household income in Upper Darby: ~$69,000\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Median household income in Radnor: ~$159,000\u00a0<\/p>\n
Combined (county + municipal + school) millage rate for 2025:<\/p>\n
Upper Darby: ~43 mills\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Radnor: ~22 mills\u00a0<\/p>\n
A typical Upper Darby home assessed at $165,000 owes about $7,100 a year in property taxes \u2014 4.3 percent of its value. A typical Radnor home assessed at $667,000 owes about $14,800 \u2014 2.2 percent of its value.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s double the rate on half the wealth.<\/p>\n
For many Upper Darby families earning $50,000 or less, that $7,100 bill consumes fifteen to twenty percent (or more) of their entire income before utilities, insurance, or groceries. In Radnor, the typical homeowner pays under nine percent of household income in property taxes.<\/p>\n
And the final insult? Despite shouldering a far heavier burden, Upper Darby School District spent $14,728 per student in 2022. Radnor spent $25,264 \u2014 70 percent more.<\/p>\n
The system doesn\u2019t just fail to be progressive. It is aggressively regressive. Lower property values trigger higher effective tax rates, which forces working-class towns to tax their residents harder just to deliver basic services. Wealthier towns tax heavily, hoard commercial ratables, and lavish their schools with resources.<\/p>\n
A form of \u201ceconomic apartheid\u201d is encouraged, and the more successful are rewarded for leaving a working class community. I sold a home in Upper Darby and bought a home in Newtown Square. My new home is worth a multiple of my old home and yet my taxes are 50 percent less. The system is fundamentally flawed.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t an accident. It\u2019s how Pennsylvania chose to fund local government a century ago, and we\u2019ve never fixed it.<\/p>\n
Since Democrats took full control of Delaware County Council in 2020, the county real-estate tax has jumped 55 percent. The county has also borrowed $415 million that taxpayers will repay \u2014 with interest \u2014 for the next two decades. Those increases land on top of already crushing school and municipal taxes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Their response, essentially, is \u201clet them eat cake.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the one-time federal Covid money and rainy-day funds dry up \u2014 as they soon will \u2014 the next wave of tax hikes is inevitable. And once again, the heaviest weight will fall on the communities already paying the highest effective rates.<\/p>\n
This is not sustainable. Families in Chester, Upper Darby, Yeadon, and Darby Borough are being priced out of the only county they\u2019ve ever called home \u2014 not because they overspent, but because the tax code itself is rigged against them.<\/p>\n
We keep hearing that \u201ceveryone has to pay their fair share.\u201d But the numbers show the working-class share is already twice as large, relative to income and home value, as the share paid in the county\u2019s wealthiest enclaves.<\/p>\n
Fairness isn\u2019t complicated. It starts with three steps Delaware County leaders have so far refused to take:<\/p>\n
1. Publicly acknowledge the regressive nature of the current system.\u00a0
2. Stop your reckless spending spree.
3. Lead the fight in Harrisburg for a new school-funding formula that doesn\u2019t punish towns simply because their homes are worth less.<\/p>\n
Until that happens, every new tax increase and every new bond issue is another brick in the wall separating Delaware County\u2019s haves from its have-nots.<\/p>\n
Working families here aren\u2019t asking for a handout. They\u2019re simply asking for a tax system that doesn\u2019t treat them as second-class citizens in their own county.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s time for Delaware County to give them the tax fairness they deserve.<\/p>\n
Wally Nunn is the former Chairman of Delaware County Council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Upper Darby and Radnor sit just a few miles apart in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. One is working-class. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[212,233,2261,147,149,148,150],"class_list":["post-50965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upper-darby","tag-delaware-county","tag-schools","tag-tax","tag-upper-darby","tag-upper-darby-headlines","tag-upper-darby-news","tag-upper-darby-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50965","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=50965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}