A talkback.lancasteronline.com posting that may have been by their very able reporter Gil Smart, states in part:
“F&M or its president probably could have avoided much of the acrimony by making a sizeable payment in lieu of taxes to the city, as LGH has done. There has been comparably less complaining about LGH’s massive expansion – and the money is why, I think. It isn’t like F&M couldn’t afford it, either. A million bucks will buy you a lot of goodwill in a city that’s strapped for cash and looking at you sideways because you want this and that but don’t want to cough up some sort of in-lieu-of payment.”
NewsLanc respectfully disagrees that non-profit and tax exempt Franklin & Marshall College should pay a share of what otherwise would be its real estate taxes.
Lancaster General Hospital is a public, non-profit institution for the purpose of providing health care for our community and it earns over a hundred million dollars a year in profits.
In contrast, F & M is a private college that depends upon tuitions and gifts from donors to support its programs and to expand. It does not profit from our community! Rather it contributes much.
LGH has a moral responsibility to use a puny 5% of its immense profits to pay its fair share of taxes. F & M has a fiduciary responsibility to its student body and its donors to use funds exclusively for college purposes.
