Drive along Route 22 through Murrysville, turn off William Penn Highway toward the old downtown blocks, and at some point you cross a line that has nothing to do with school buses or property values. There's no sign. The houses don't change style. But you've left the Municipality of Murrysville and entered the Borough of Export, a separate government with its own council, its own budget, and its own vote on next year's tax rate.
Most buyers touring Franklin Regional School District never notice this. They see one district name on the listing sheet, assume one set of rules, and move on to square footage. That assumption costs them nothing until the year their new town's council votes differently than the one next door.
The Line You Can't See From the Street
Export is about as small as Pennsylvania boroughs get: four-tenths of a square mile, a population that has hovered around 890 residents for two decades, and a footprint entirely enclosed by Murrysville's much larger 37 square miles. It is, geographically, an island inside a much larger town. Legally, it is a completely separate municipal corporation, with its own mayor, its own council, and its own solicitor.
Delmont, a few miles east, is its own borough too, with the same independence. All three towns, Murrysville, Export, and Delmont, feed into Franklin Regional School District. All three share the same high school, the same middle school, the same intermediate and primary buildings. But sharing a district office does not mean sharing a tax office. Each town sets its own municipal millage on its own schedule, answerable to its own voters, not to a shared Franklin Regional board or to each other.
That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should, because school district reputation is exactly the thing most relocation searches filter on first. A family that finds Franklin Regional through school ratings and works backward into a specific street is, without realizing it, also choosing which of three separate governments gets to vote on their tax bill every December.
What Murrysville Actually Charges, and Who Else Gets a Vote
Murrysville publishes its numbers plainly. The municipality's real estate millage currently sits at 12.05 mills, applied to a property's assessed value. The bill has three layers: Westmoreland County, the Municipality of Murrysville, and Franklin Regional School District. They are billed separately, on separate schedules: county and municipal taxes go out in spring, school taxes follow in July on the district's own fiscal year.
Export and Delmont run the same three-layer structure, but each borough council sets its own municipal rate independent of Murrysville's. There's no requirement that they move in step, and in most years they don't.
Same District, Same Budget Season, Different Outcomes
The 2026 municipal budget cycle in Westmoreland County makes this concrete in a way a rate sheet alone can't. According to a TribLive report on municipal budgets passed for 2026, Murrysville, Export, and Delmont all held their property tax rates flat for the year. That's genuinely notable, because plenty of their neighbors did not.
| Municipality | 2026 Property Tax Action |
|---|---|
| Murrysville | Held flat |
| Export | Held flat |
| Delmont | Held flat |
| North Huntingdon | Raised 3.5 mills (about 30%), first hike since 2012, split between general fund and a new capital reserve for roads and stormwater |
| Hempfield | Doubled from 3 to 6 mills, first hike in more than 30 years, funding a new dedicated fire tax |
| Adamsburg | More than doubled, from 2.8 to 5.8 mills |
North Huntingdon's township manager pointed to bridge repair funding that had been deferred for years. Hempfield's new millage funds a fire tax the township hadn't needed before. Adamsburg's jump reflects a small budget where even modest new costs move the rate sharply. None of these towns share Franklin Regional's schools, which is precisely the point: the pressure driving tax increases across Westmoreland County in 2026 is regional and structural, rising infrastructure costs, the end of pandemic-era federal relief, deferred capital projects finally coming due. It touched some towns and not others almost at random relative to school district lines.
Franklin Regional's three towns happened to land on the calm side of that split in 2026. That's a fact worth knowing, but it isn't a guarantee about 2027 or 2030. Three separate councils made three separate calls this year. They'll make three separate calls again next year, and there's no mechanism that requires them to agree just because their kids go to the same schools.
The Closing Cost That Isn't Uniform Either
Municipal independence doesn't stop at the annual tax bill. It shows up at the settlement table too. According to Murrysville's real estate tax information, effective January 1, 2022, the municipality raised its real estate transfer tax from 1.0 percent to 1.5 percent, with the municipality retaining 1 percent and the remaining 0.5 percent going to Franklin Regional School District. That change applies to a transaction because the property sits in Murrysville, not because it sits in the school district. A comparable sale closing a few blocks away in Export or Delmont answers to whatever transfer tax structure that borough's own council has set, which may or may not mirror Murrysville's number.
For a buyer comparing three listings across three towns inside the same district, this means the closing statement can differ by municipality even when the school assignment, the lot size, and the asking price look nearly identical. It's a detail worth raising with a lender or title company before signing, not after.
What This Means Before You Write an Offer
Does "Franklin Regional" tell you what you'll pay in municipal tax? No. It tells you which schools your children will attend. The municipal rate, the transfer tax split, and the trajectory of future increases are set independently by whichever of the three town councils has jurisdiction over that specific address, and that address might sit inside a borough of about four-tenths of a square mile you didn't know was separate from its much larger neighbor.
Should a frozen 2026 rate change how you compare these towns? Treat it as current information, not a promise. Rates freeze and rise based on each council's own budget pressures, capital needs, and infrastructure age, the same forces that pushed North Huntingdon, Hempfield, and Adamsburg to raise theirs sharply this year. A calm budget season in Murrysville, Export, or Delmont reflects this year's decisions, not a permanent policy.
Franklin Regional's reputation is earned at the school level, and that part of the picture is genuinely shared across all three towns. The tax and closing cost picture is not, and the only way to know what applies to a specific listing is to ask which municipality it sits in, then look at that municipality's own budget, not the district's.
If you're comparing homes across Murrysville, Export, and Delmont and want the specific municipal and transfer tax picture for an address you're considering, the Harmotto Team can walk through what each town's current rates and recent budget actions mean for your offer and your closing costs. Schedule a consultation to get answers specific to the address, not just the district name.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
