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Health & Fitness

Stewart's Town Budget under 2% Tax Cap



Recently my opponent for Town Supervisor sent out a mailing to voters, paid for by Councilman Denis Troy, making the absurd claim that I wanted to raise town taxes above New York’s 2% tax cap.

Of course, as every local media source accurately reported, the proposed budget I submitted on September 24 came in underthe tax cap—it was a fiscally conservative budget that kept the tax increase to just 1.9% while making significant cuts to the requests made by department heads. Our spending rose only slightly, and most of this increase was driven by mandated costs like pensions and benefits over which we have no control.

 
Though my colleagues on the Town Board have spent several weeks criticizing the route I took to produce a budget that stayed under the cap, they never produced a single concrete proposal for any changes to the budget, and when it came time last week to vote on whether to adopt my plan as the provisional town budget, they all voted yes.
 
At the same time we approved the preliminary town budget, we also held a required vote on whether to allow the town budget to exceed the tax cap if it proves necessary to do this. Though my budget does not exceed the tax cap, it’s only $15,000 under the cap as estimated by our finance team. A small change could put the budget over the cap, and expose the town to stiff penalties from New York State if we exceeded the cap without holding a vote on whether to do so. Making matters more complicated, the final tax cap number for Orangetown is actually still uncertain - it can change based on tax challenges in the coming month. For example, we are still awaiting data from Rockland County on the impact of property tax challenges on our town budget.
 
Given all that, I felt it was prudent to give the Town the flexibility to override the Tax Cap should the final numbers show that our budget would work out to, say a 2.1% rather than a 1.9% increase. This is the same override vote that the Board approved last year, the same year that our final budget did in fact come in under 2%. So it’s not the case that voting to give the town flexibility in this area equates to voting for a tax increase. This year, our town attorney and finance director recommended that we adopt this resolution at our October 22nd meeting. I was joined in my vote by Republican Councilman Paul Valentine, hardly known as a fiscal liberal.

 
Now by harping on the tax cap override vote, my opponent is attempting to dupe voters into believing I support raising taxes. I don’t. My proposed budget is under the cap and the budget we passed last year was also below the tax cap.
 
I’m confident that voters will see through this baloney they’re hearing from Wettje.

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