Boston's Long Overdue Reformed PILOT System Is Still MIA

[hethatishere]

Last week the Mayor of Providence created a controversy by announcing a Payment In Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) system by which students of local Colleges and Universities pay a $150 fee per semester. This would be the first time a city levied a per-pupil fee to charge local schools for their use of land and municipal services. Naturally, the Universities

Comments

[hethatishere]

Yeah, WP seems to have posted it while I was still drafting it.

Hopefully it will be clearer soon!

[hethatishere]

You might not be paying more at all, actually. Just the fee itself would be listed right in your tuition bill rather than being hidden in other things. With this system, your tuition might go down since its hard to know how good a deal Northeastern got vs. other institutions.

Overall, the per-student tax makes a heck of a lot more sense and has much more public accountability than the current system where some schools are paying a lot more than others per-student and the whole thing is negotiated with a lot of secrecy and a lack of accountability.