School tax breaks slashed
Flanders, Riverside, Northampton residents to pay big in 2009
1 comments below
Residents in the Southampton Town portion of the Riverhead School District will have to dig deep into their pockets next year, despite the down economy, and somehow come up with an additional $1.7 million in school taxes over this year.
The Southampton Town Board on Tuesday approved $1,395,267 worth of Community Preservation Fund payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) for the Riverhead district taxpayers, down $1.7 million from the $3.1 million they received this year.
“We felt that if they are going to withdraw the payments, they should do it gradually so as not to hurt the taxpayers,” said Riverhead School Superintendent Diane Scricca.
The Community Preservation Fund (CPF) is a voter-approved two-percent real estate transfer tax that is used for open space and farmland development rights purchases.
In 2003, voters approved a change to the CPF, allowing up to 10 percent of the fund to be used to offset taxes in districts where a certain percent of the land is off the tax rolls due to land preservation in the Pine Barrens.
The CPF payments do not affect the school budgets, as they are merely subtracted from the school tax levy by the town before it sends out tax bills.
Initially, Riverhead was the only school district that qualified for the PILOTs, but last year the state legislature changed the law, without a public vote, and allowed Hampton Bays and Eastport-South Manor school districts to qualify as well.
Amidst concerns by residents in the Riverhead district, which includes the Flanders, Riverside and Northampton hamlets in Southampton Town, the Town Board last year, under then-Supervisor Skip Heaney, ultimately allocated $3.1 million in PILOTs for Riverhead.
But Supervisor Linda Kabot, who was a council person at the time, said the town has since been told by the state comptroller's office that it allocated too much in PILOTs for Riverhead last year, and that the $3.1 million was higher than the estimated amount of tax loss the district had due to the undeveloped land.
Ms. Kabot's tentative 2009 budget in October allocated just $953,000 in PILOTs for Riverhead.
Dr. Scricca had previously said the drop from $3.1 million to $953,000 in PILOTs would amount to an 18 percent tax increase for residents in the Southampton Town portion of the school district.
Last year, for a resident with a home assessed at $500,000, the tax relief from the PILOTs program for the Riverhead district amounted to about $1,297 in tax relief.
The new, lower number would make for $568 in relief, meaning the taxpayer would have to come up an additional $729 more in 2009.
Councilman Chris Nuzzi, backed by Council members Anna Throne-Holst and Dan Russo, had submitted an alternate PILOT proposal that contained $3 million for the Riverhead district.
Ms. Kabot then unveiled an alternate proposal of her own that would provide some $1.39 million to Riverhead district taxpayers.
Ms. Kabot said Mr. Nuzzi's proposal was illegal because it exceeded the amount of tax loss. Both Ms. Kabot and town attorney Daniel Adams warned that the town could face consequences if it adopted that plan.
On Tuesday, Mr. Nuzzi and the board members who supported his proposal conceded, and withdrew the plan.
“It's a shame that we're not going to be consistent with what we did last year,” Mr. Nuzzi said.
“Three of us on the board worked hard with the intention of supporting the school districts in our town that have been hit hardest on the budget,” Ms. Throne-Holst said. “I thought until the last minute that we could find a way to meet the needs of everyone affected. It's hard to walk into something that was not done right in the past and then be told there was no legal way to make it right.”
“It's all about the integrity of the program,” Ms. Kabot said. “You can't give more in PILOTs that the actual tax loss from parkland. That's what it boils down to.”
She said the economy has resulted in a sharp drop in the amount of CPF revenue the town gets, and that the town may not be able to buy any land this year. She is projecting that the town will receive just $21 million in CPF revenue this year, down from $53 million the previous year.
State Assemblyman Fred Thiele (R-Sag Harbor) recently proposed state legislation to remove much of the discretion towns have in deciding which districts get how much in CPF payments each year.
Ms. Kabot the Town Board is committed to working with state lawmakers next year to propose modifications to the CPF program that would clarify the parameters of eligibility for the PILOTs and the methods used for determining tax loss.
tgannon@timesreview
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1 comments found
Pilots : 6/19/2009
Its a shame what our elected officials Assemblyman Fred Thiele and Senator LaValle have done to the Flanders Riverside and Northampton communities.It was a vote by the people of Southampton Town as a whole in 2003, that allocated relief for the tax payers with 84% of the land taken off the tax rolls.Now they just change legislation for the allocation to accept other districts that have far more services than our low income area without going to a public vote.This undermined the legal process of our right to vote as was previously done.WHY?
