We Struck A Nerve

The G10 is used to hearing lies, “misinformation” and obfuscation from the corner office and from many of our elected officials. Typically, most of the employees of the Town are open, truthful, helpful and friendly. But whenever we uncover, expose or publicize a lie, Mr Feiner and his team ramp up the rhetoric. If you are fortunate enough to be allowed a miserly 3-minutes to speak at a Town Board meeting and expose a lie, the standard answer blurted from Mr Feiner is, “That's not true.” Once you’ve heard that said, you know you’ve hit the nerve. You had your 3-minutes. Thanks. Now get lost!

Following his admission of exposure, depending on how critical the lie is will warrant the requisite response. Case in point? Our previous article highlighted the impending tax increases that everyone in Greenburgh will be socked with come next year. This year is only the announcement phase – a Feiner administration ploy dating back years. After all, we don’t want to have the tax increase hanging over our heads come election time. So, announce it during the transitional phase between school graduations, school ending-camp starting and vacations and walk away slowly. Taxpayers, while hurting financially due to the burdens imposed by Mr Feiner, knowingly have short memories. Still, we hit a nerve.

When we pointed this out in our article entitled Town Delivers Triple-Whammy on June 8th, it was met with the veiled media blitz, “Assessor Clarifies the record...” in the Feiner-friendly mainstream media. You’ll probably recall that the Town mailed, at $.46 per piece, a letter on the first day of the appeal period for tax grievances*. It was subsequently postmarked five days later - robbing dissatisfied residents of six usable days to appeal their assessment increases. This is just like the Town Board meetings where Mr Feiner and his Board delay the Town business operations using delay tactics doing presentations, listening to poetry, song and other non-town operational time-killers. They do this to thin the crowds knowing most people work for a (highly-taxed) living and can’t spend all night watching this abuse.

The letter from the Town begins with, “In 2016 the Town of Greenburgh underwent an important and much needed reassessment project.” It doesn’t say that Mr Feiner neglected to perform his duty and do the reassessment during his 24-year tenure! It continues on, describing their use of Tyler Technologies to complete the assessment process. It doesn’t mention the dissatisfaction not only Greenburgh residents found with this second-rate company, or the other communities who utilized them as well only to experience a public furor at those town and village meetings. Tyler Technologies seemed to screw up more than they got it right.

The assessment change for a neighboring property went from $279,400 to $290,600, resulting in an $11,200 assessment change. The media blitz from the Assessor’s office says that blogs are providing inaccurate information saying if your assessment went up, your taxes will increase. “The assessment adjustments due to market trends do not necessarily indicate an increase in property taxes.” This sure sounds like it’s opening the door to higher taxes. Regrettably, we do need higher taxes in Greenburgh. There are several more lawsuits the Town must fund due to the laws being violated by Mr Feiner and his Board. As such, we, as a Town, need to fund the guilty verdict fines and penalties being brought upon us by this administration. We wonder if they would be so cavalier with their bad decisions if they could be held personally accountable? Regardless, raising taxes is obviously one way to fund these repeated court cases, guilty verdicts and fines.

So the assessor’s media blitz continues to discuss the need to focus on the 2017 assessment roll and that your taxes in 2018 will be based on the 2017 assessment. Basically, she is saying nothing will happen this year when you’re paying attention, but rather next year after the shock has worn off. She continues to discuss the 65 community outreach meetings that they’ve been presenting for the last three and a half years. It doesn’t mention when taxpayers tried to ask questions and were told to wait until they finished speaking. Obviously, the smarter-than-the Town Board-thought residents while respectful, didn’t realize how poorly residents get treated by the Feiner administration. The Edgemont people do, hence their incorporation movement. This abuse needs to change. Only then will we get A Better Greenburgh.

* Grievance period is from June 1 to June 20.