Mayor's Weekly Column

From the Desk of Mayor Hall

Reforming State Mandates is Critical for Property Tax Relief

Local governments across the state are facing the most difficult challenges we have experienced in many, many years. A primary concern for local communities is that the state has imposed mandates requiring our schools and local governments to pay increasingly higher costs for such things as employee pensions and health insurance, while at the same time our state aid continues to decrease. These rising costs, over which local municipalities have no control, threaten our ability to provide essential services to Village residents at affordable prices.

Unless municipalities and local school districts are relieved of state mandates … the tax cap will only dig us into a bigger hole. 

On January 28, Governor Cuomo forwarded his proposal to the state legislature for the implementation of a 2 percent property tax cap. The cap would limit increases in property tax levies to 2 percent or the annual increase in the consumer price index (CPI), whichever is less. This sounds like a good thing … however, unless municipalities and local school districts are relieved of state mandates requiring them to pay skyrocketing costs for employee pensions, health insurance benefits and other demands currently outside their control, the tax cap will only dig us into a bigger hole. 

The New York State Conference of Mayors and Municipal Officers (NYCOM), of which I am a member, is strongly opposedto a property tax cap unless it is accompanied by relief from state mandated costs that burden our local communities. Although the Senate approved two measures related to mandate relief, these would not take effect until a later date -- when the damage has already been done.

NYCOM’s Mayoral Task Force has published a series of recommendations for mandate and property tax relief titled “You Can’t Cap What You Can’t Control.” Recommendations include allowing a temporary freeze on public sector wages, requiring local government employees and retirees to contribute to the cost of health insurance, restructuring pension cost-sharing and benefits and reforming existing labor relations laws. To learn more about these and other recommendations issued by the NYCOM Mayoral Task Force, please visit www.NYCOM.org.

To stay on top of what’s happening in the Village, please join our electronic mailing list by sending your name and email address to Mayor@villageofhempsteadny.gov, and listen to the “Hempstead Happening” radio show every Wednesday at 4:15 p.m. on WTHE-AM (1520).

Sincerely,

Wayne

Wayne J. Hall Sr.
Mayor of the Incorporated Village of Hempstead

 

 

Back to Weekly Columns