GoggleWorks Apartments Tax-Exempt, Judge Rules

Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Berks County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A Berks County judge has ruled that the GoggleWorks Apartments are completely tax-exempt, a decision that will save the five-story complex at Second and Washington streets $29,500 a year.

The order, handed down this week by Judge Scott E. Lash overturned the Berks County Board of Assessment Appeals, which decided in December that 80 percent of the building is taxable since 80 percent of the 59 apartments are being offered at market rate.

Built by the nonprofit Our City Reading, the complex is owned and managed by the Reading Housing Authority.

In a 26-page opinion, Lash said the market-rate apartments are tax-exempt because they fall within the scope and purpose of the housing authority’s operation, in this case to develop and revitalize a local community.

Read more: http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=514800

Healthy Ways To fight Truancy In Reading Aired

Map of Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States Public School Districts (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There are students in the Reading School District who accrue 10 absence excuses from a parent and 40 from doctors in one school year.

So health care officials were urged Friday to be on the lookout for such students and not to feel pressured to issue them absence excuses.

Students are allowed to return to school without such notices, but the absences will be recorded as unexcused, said Anne Fisher, supervisor of the school district’s nurses.

“They don’t need a note to come back,” she said.

Read more: http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=509416