Wrapping Up The Town’s 2018 Business
By Thaddeus Flint
Senior’s filing deadlines, Grievance Day, and the Comprehensive Plan were the long subjects of a short night at the December 17 meeting of the Stephentown Town Board.
“This acknowledges the great value the Town places in its Senior population, “ Supervisor Larry Eckhardt said as the Board voted with all in favor of extending the filing deadlines for Senior Citizen’s Exemptions. Eckhardt said the Board recognizes the difficulty placed on some residents who flee the Town for warmer and safer lands–or Florida–to timely file each year for their Senior Exemptions. Why the stress if there isn’t any real reason for it? Senior residents now have almost six more weeks to put off until the last minute filing for exemptions. How many Seniors apply for exemptions? “Just about all of them,” said Assessor Jennifer Van Deusen. The new final deadline will be Grievance Day.
The rest of the Town’s residents not Seniors, whatever that population number currently is, will also receive an extension—one day—to go and complain about their property taxes. Grievance Day is now the fourth Wednesday in May instead of the fourth Tuesday. This wasn’t to acknowledge residents for being such creative grievers, but because the Town Court was being moved from Thursday to Tuesday nights.
Further good news is that the Town’s 2019 Budget is already going down. The budget adopted showed a percentage increase of taxes of 2.81%. Someone then went through that budget again and found the math a bit off. One hundred dollars too much! The new-new budget now reflects that savings with a tax increase of only 2.79%. Next year hadn’t even started yet and it was already looking respectable.
Legal bills are also expected to decrease in 2019. The adopted budget shows that Stephentown expects attorney fees to be the same that they were expected to be this year, which was $12,500. That number proved to be somewhat off, as the projected 2018 actual budget for legal matters is listed at $92,451 and the year wasn’t over yet. That number was unexpectedly 636.9% over the expected. However, by utilizing that same $12,500 once again, the Board seems to be signaling that the unexpected is no longer expected. Those keeping track of the legal scores at home can add another $4,598 to whatever total they had. The new total—check your math!– should be somewhere between “a lot” and “way too much.” The final figures will be known in the next few months.
One stimulus to the Town’s revenues proved to be its share of the Mortgage Tax of 1.25%. For 2018 it “was almost double” of last year’s said the Supervisor. “There were a lot of sales,” confirmed Assessor Van Deusen. Stephentown was looking at around $32,000 instead of the $17,000 it received in 2017. Eckhardt also said he believed that the Town’s portion of Sales Tax should be pretty close to what had been budgeted. With more money still scheduled to come in, Stephentown is down about $60,000 in sales tax. The Supervisor describe the distribution of Sales Tax as “convoluted.” The Board “doesn’t really have a good idea of how the Sales Tax distribution works,” said Eckhardt. Somewhere someone probably has an Excel sheet that takes tax figures and convolutes them at the touch of a button, and then out comes a check to the Town. “When there are lots of sales, we get more money,” said the Supervisor.
If anything, the year 2018 proved it’s very difficult to foresee what the future will bring. And that difficulty is compounded in small towns with tight budgets who are trying to keep from taxing their residents out as costs rise and un-funded mandates increase. One way to plan for the unexpected is to at least have a plan to begin with. While Stephentown’s Comprehensive Plan—which itself has been in the planning stages for the last few years—won’t necessarily be a save-all when it comes to unforeseen legal bills and other costs, it does at least give some guideline as to where the Town is, and where it wants to go. With that in mind, the Board voted, will all in favor, of adopting the final draft of the Stephentown Comprehensive Plan. A large portion of that Plan outlines the Town’s need for increasing residents’ opportunities in “employment, recreation and services.” But at the same time, the Plan highlights continually that residents don’t want to lose the Town’s rural charm – the calmness, the beauty and the vistas. Go forward but go forward with thought and circumspection. “Care must be taken,” states an evaluation of the Draft Plan, to preserve Stephentown’s “character and prevent it from becoming a ghost town or a Disney-esque tourist town.”