Homestead

  Jacquelyn Daley seems right at home in a gold linen skirt, brick-color top, beige apron, and white shawl and bonnet as she goes about her chores. She pokes around the heirloom beets and beans in the garden. She checks on the rye bread or molasses cookies baking in the outdoor oven that she once crawled inside - to collect trays of fruit that had been dryingovernight. "It was still 120 degrees. The blueberries almost got singed," she says, casual about the possibility that she might have gotten singed as well.

HAVE YOU APPLIED for the homestead exemption? If you're a homeowner, you have until July 31 to do so. The homestead will reduce your assessment by $30,000, although the amount of the exemption is subject to change. Visit http://ph.ly/exemption to fill out a form online, or call the Office of Property Assessment at 215-686-9200 or 3-1-1 to apply over the phone. You can also mail it in. Also ask about other forms of tax relief, like installment plans and tax freezes for seniors, by calling 215-686-6442 or visit http://ph.ly/revenue . - Jan Ransom

The cluster of homes on the Pennsauken-Cherry Hill line - many are new, but to this day some remain ramshackle and faded around the edges - used to be called Matchtown. To be nice, some people will say the name came from a match factory that sat at the top of Magnolia Avenue. But the residents of this tightly knit black neighborhood also remember the derisive, mean jokes about how one match would set the whole place blazing. To the people who live there - about 200 spread over 12 blocks evenly split between Cherry Hill and Pennsauken - the name of their neighborhood is Homestead.

THE CITY is offering a tax break to homeowners to soften the blow of its property reassessment. Known as a homestead exemption, it's limited to homeowners who live in their houses. But the city has approved exemptions for at least 19 properties that have no houses on them, according to the Office of Property Assessment's records. Marisa Waxman, OPA's assistant administrator, said that means one of two things: Either the property owners committed fraud or city records are wrong.

There are always a lot of bars and churches in mill towns to tend the lonely, the thirsty and the dispirited. Not long ago here, there was one saloon for every 47 people and one house of worship for every 257. The amount of money that goes into the collection basket when it is passed on Sundays and the number of boilermakers downed daily are indices of the economy of a steel town. By those measures, life is bad in Homestead, population 5,400, where there are solid, brick churches and cool, dark bars often shoulder to shoulder on the sloped streets reaching up from the Monongahela River and the steel plant that runs down the town like a spine.

WITH JUST A little more than two months left for Philadelphia homeowners to turn in their homestead applications, City Council is concerned that hundreds of thousands of eligible applicants - mostly in the city's poorest neighborhoods - may not make the July 31 deadline. "The worst thing that could happen is we get to the July 31 deadline and we have a significant number of people who have not applied," said Council President Darrell Clarke. "That could be problematic for people in our districts.

In its haste to mail out millions of Homestead tax rebates, the Florio administration has withheld checks from thousands of people mistakenly accused of not having paid their hospital bills. The state's 85 hospitals have been swamped with calls since last week from patients irate over notices from New Jersey saying that their bills were unpaid. The hospitals say that many of the incorrect notices could have been avoided if the state had delayed the checks for a few weeks while they verified the allegedly unpaid bills.

She had not planned on it, but Valerie Still said something drew her to visit the old Medford homestead of her great-great-great-grandfather, James Still, known as "the black doctor of the Pines. " It's a good thing she did go, or she may have never known that the land and the office where her ancestor became locally famous for his 19th-century medicinal cures were up for sale. "Initially, I was thrilled," said Still, who had thought she could easily buy the office and build a replica of her ancestor's home next door.

The Medford homestead of James Still, the son of runaway slaves who became known for his curing concoctions, will be preserved for generations. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection bought the 8.8-acre spread yesterday from the Trollinger family for $875,000 and plans to turn it into a museum dedicated to Still's life. "We are very proud to close on this property on this last day of Black History Month," Deputy Commissioner John Watson said. "I'm glad we can make sure it's protected and preserved.

Is it the only place left where a man going to the movies must wear a coat and tie? It just may be. Is it the only five-star resort run by a former computer scientist for Xerox and Apple who is the fourth generation of his family to own and operate the place? It is. Perhaps those three disparate facts help characterize the Homestead, a 225- year-old, 600-room gracious resort secluded on its own 15,000 acres in the Hot Springs Valley of Virginia's Allegheny Mountains. The Homestead does observe the niceties.

CITY COUNCILMAN Jim Kenney is threatening to pull nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in city deposits from Wells Fargo. Following the economic downturn several years ago, the city and school district dished out millions of dollars to end financial deals known as "interest-rate swaps. " Now, elected officials are looking to help close the school district's $304 million budget hole, and Kenney says it's time big banks step up. "They should want to help us through this school issue," Kenney said, noting that Wells Fargo is one of several that arranged bad interest-rate swaps for the city.

AS CITY COUNCIL took a step toward extending the deadline to apply for the homestead exemption under the city's new property-tax system, the Nutter administration said yesterday it plans to step up outreach efforts, including sending home information about the exemption with students' report cards. Council gave preliminary approval to two bills yesterday, including one sponsored by Council President Darrell Clarke that would extend the deadline to apply for the exemption - from July 31 to Sept.

A Philadelphia City Council committee unanimously approved two bills Wednesday - one that would extend until mid-September the deadline for homeowners to apply for the homestead exemption, and one that would allow people who buy homes after the new deadline to apply as well. The city had received more than 287,000 homestead applications by mid-April and approved more than 192,000, Finance Director Rob Dubow said. An estimated 340,000 homeowners are eligible for the exemption, which deducts a set amount from a property's assessment before the tax rate is applied.

WITH JUST A little more than two months left for Philadelphia homeowners to turn in their homestead applications, City Council is concerned that hundreds of thousands of eligible applicants - mostly in the city's poorest neighborhoods - may not make the July 31 deadline. "The worst thing that could happen is we get to the July 31 deadline and we have a significant number of people who have not applied," said Council President Darrell Clarke. "That could be problematic for people in our districts.

The politically charged process of deciding how to spread $1.2 billion in property taxes across Philadelphia surged forward Thursday, with Mayor Nutter suggesting a basic tax of 1.32 percent and three tax breaks to ease the impact on lower-income home and business owners. Nutter acknowledged that negotiations with City Council to find the "right balance" were just beginning and subject to change. "But we have to start somewhere," he told reporters after using the Mayor's Reception Room to deliver the budget address that he was unable to finish in Council chambers.

The politically charged process of deciding how to spread $1.2 billion in property taxes across Philadelphia surged forward Thursday, with Mayor Nutter suggesting a basic tax of 1.32 percent and three tax breaks to ease the impact on lower-income home and business owners. Nutter acknowledged that negotiations with City Council to find the "right balance" were just beginning and subject to change. "But we have to start somewhere," he told reporters after using the Mayor's Reception Room to deliver the budget address that he was unable to finish in Council chambers.

THE CITY is offering a tax break to homeowners to soften the blow of its property reassessment. Known as a homestead exemption, it's limited to homeowners who live in their houses. But the city has approved exemptions for at least 19 properties that have no houses on them, according to the Office of Property Assessment's records. Marisa Waxman, OPA's assistant administrator, said that means one of two things: Either the property owners committed fraud or city records are wrong.

MORE THAN 100,000 homeowners, including huge clusters in some of the city's poorest areas, haven't gotten the message about the homestead exemption, a relief measure that could save them hundreds of dollars a year under the city's new property-tax system. The problem is particularly acute in some of the city's predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods - partly because the brochures, ads and mailers on which the city spent $414,000 were only in English. The information about the exemption, which would lower a home's taxable value under the Actual Value Initiative by $30,000, was translated into several languages, but those versions were available only online.

HAVE YOU APPLIED for the homestead exemption? If you're a homeowner, you have until July 31 to do so. The homestead will reduce your assessment by $30,000, although the amount of the exemption is subject to change. Visit http://ph.ly/exemption to fill out a form online, or call the Office of Property Assessment at 215-686-9200 or 3-1-1 to apply over the phone. You can also mail it in. Also ask about other forms of tax relief, like installment plans and tax freezes for seniors, by calling 215-686-6442 or visit http://ph.ly/revenue . - Jan Ransom

WINNERS AND losers" - it's a phrase heard often on the floor of City Council, especially when it comes to taxes. The phrase peppered the debate last summer over the city's move to the Actual Value Initiative as Council grappled with questions over who stood to gain most or be hurt by the citywide reassessment. The phrase has come around again as Council works to put the finishing touches on AVI, including the so-called homestead exemption, which forgives taxes up to $30,000 for resident homeowners.