City of Philadelphia releases 2014, 2015 property assessment data

After seven months in the works, the City of Philadelphia released its 2014 and 2015 property assessment data on Tuesday. This data will not include any property assessments changed after Tuesday, May 6, through the appeals process which is currently ongoing, said Chief Assessment Officer Richie McKeithen.

The release feels like a victory for city’s open data team and the Office of Property Assessment, the department that creates and owns this data. The assessment data, a “high value data set” as opposed to other sets considered low-hanging fruit, is one that’s been at least seven months in the making. It was posted on the city’s open data release schedule last September and has been technically “ready to release” as of January, but until now, the Office of Property Assessment had not been ready to release the data.

The city still has not released other high-value data sets like property tax balances, the city budget, city employee salaries and ‘Part 2’ crime (crimes like drug offenses, sex offenses, simple assault). When asked about the property tax balances, Civic Technology Director Tim Wisniewski said the city had been focused on releasing the property assessment data and now plans to work with the Revenue Department to release the tax balance data.