Tax Revenues Down, No Relief In Sight

We wonder how Mr Feiner will work around the NYS 2% Tax Cap and still be able to go unchallenged about raising taxes? He recently sent out an email (we're awaiting the snail-mail version) stating, “The town of Greenburgh is committed to complying with the tax cap - which limits tax increases. Unlike some government entities in the region and state our tax increases have been below the tax cap every year since the cap was enacted.” This is only partially true as the politicians have provided numerous "outs" for them to be able to say they adhered to the tax cap when they really didn’t. Case in point, while Mr Feiner says he and his Town Board stayed within the tax cap of 2%, our taxes increased this year by 3.4%. It hardly seems they're adhering to the cap!

Another way around budgetary constraints is to avoid the budget completely. An example of this would be the “special meeting” held by the Town Board to covertly approve $1.5 million to rehabilitate the Glenville Water District storage tank. “In the near future,” Mr Feiner said, “We will rehabilitate additional water tanks located around the town.” Then he added, “We're reviewing another contract to address other tanks. I anticipate extensive infrastructure work to take place in the coming years. . . .but don't have costs yet.” Of course he doesn’t have costs yet - those pesky details. Nor will he. What he has figured out this time is by holding unscheduled, almost ad hoc, “special” budget votes under the guise of time constrained emergency decisions needing to be addressed for unplanned problems, he gets to skirt the typical scrutiny of this expense. As we’re witnessing this time, it’s water tank refurbishing. By doing it this way, he avoids the budget process, the planning and a real public hearings process and of course, the 2% tax cap limit.

All this was done on the cusp of learning that sales tax revenue for the Town is down by 2.4% for the Town, or $152,000. The reality is its not a huge amount of money. It’s a bit funny that sales tax revenue is down, and yet Mr Feiner and his Town Board continue proving they are anti-business by increasing fees, taxes and costs to local merchants. Their actions belie their words. His latest  coup de grace was the hotel tax that he personally insisted Legislators Stewart-Cousins and Abinanti push into law on behalf of the Town and our “destitute” financial condition. The convoluted thought process espoused by Mr Abinanti is that this is a victimless tax because it only effects out-of-towners. Hardly. And, Mr Feiner, a vociferous proponent of the tax, is the one who single-handedly created the Town’s financial crisis. Oddly, he never mentions those points. What eventually will happen is corporations will begin to trim their travel to the area because of costs, which will create a domino effect with other industries whose products and services coincide with corporate travel and expenses.

Those who subscribe to the theory of big government assuming the local cost burdens by the County, State and ultimately Federal government must realize that they too are experiencing lower sales tax revenues. In fact, the actual report that Mr Feiner used to publicize our minor drop in tax revenue stated that Westchester County also saw a drop in sales tax revenue of 2.59%. Rockland County stayed about the same and Putnam saw a 3.15% drop from the first half of 2014. “There has been a general downward trend in sales tax collection growth over the last several years and that is continuing in 2015,” said State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli in a statement. “The slow growth in sales taxes could pose fiscal challenges for local governments across New York, especially for counties who rely heavily on sales tax collections to pay their bills.” ABG doubts Mr Feiner really cares about the loss of money, but enjoys more the opportunity to use it for yet another campaign piece through email and snail mail. It’s all about publicity.

Part of the decline in revenue is driven by online shopping and higher gas mileage vehicles purchasing less gasoline which is causing the drop in the local state and federal governments revenue. We looked at a chart of taxes per state. Simply, New York gas stations charge over a dollar in taxes per gallon. Here’s a blurb we found on one of the websites we accessed trying to learn about the gasoline taxes. It reminded us of when we try to decipher the costs and taxes on our phone bills.

Excerpt from report:
Petroleum Business Tax (13-A) - requires annual adjustment (gasoline $0.178/gal, diesel $0.1605/gal).  Petroleum Testing Fee (gasoline): $0.005/gal. Additional sales taxes apply: State Sales Tax: $0.08/gal ($0.0875/gal in the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District (MCTD)); local sales taxes also apply (some counties levy this in a cents-per-gallon manner.) Prepaid Sales Tax rates (see Publication 790, “Chart for Prepayment of Sales Tax on Motor Fuels”): $0.175/gal, $0.21/gal, $0.16/gal for Regions 1, 2, 3, respectively. Oil Spill Prevention, Control, and Compensation License fee: 0.08 cents per barrel plus a surcharge of $0.0425 cents per barrel, all petroleum products ($0.0029/gal). 

The costs from lawsuit guilty verdicts against Mr Feiner are crippling the town’s taxpaying residents. We all need relief. But imposing new taxes onto visitors to our area is not the answer. Westchester County has the highest taxes in the nation. Greenburgh’s taxes go up consistently every year, tax cap or not. The NYS Tax Cap, while a great PR stunt for the politicos, is not helping provide relief to the beleaguered taxpayers. Greenburgh residents and businesses need help from inane decisions such as this recently passed hotel tax by agenda-driven politicians. We need actions of character, moral compass and decision-making that reflects what the majority is interested in achieving, such as more open space, lower taxes, less development and congestion. We need elected officials who represent the constituency, not the developers and others with little or no “skin in the game.” Only then will we see A Better Greenburgh.