0% ? How About Less Than 0% ? Five Steps to Lowering the Tax Rate, Increasing Services and Helping Seniors

For anyone paying attention, all the hoopla over the 0% increase in the tax rate for the proposed 2008 budget is really much ado about nothing. That’s because the City administration has already banked an increase of 7.5% in the average tax bill, thanks to an average property tax assessment increase of 7.5% across the City. Citizen budget watchdog, Peter Lisi, made that painfully clear in his powerful blast against high taxes and the proposed budget at last week’s budget hearing.

With a 7.5% increase already lined up, and a shower of new revenue from a variety of new revenue streams, we owe tax payers a reduction in their tax rate. Here’s how to do it, in 5 easy steps:

1. Begin "Tax stabilization" right now. There’s already $100,000 in the Tax Stabilization Fund. Instead of adding all $160,000 of the anticipated new revenue from the hotel tax to the tax stabilization fund, let's split the difference and put half ($80,000) in the fund and the remainder ($80,000) into this year's general fund for 2008. After all, money already earmarked for tax stabilization would be put to even better use for tax reduction. [Increased Revenue = +80,000 for 2008 bottom line]
   
2. Add a new entry level police officer instead of a “community aide.” That would put an additional real police officer on the force and still accomplish all of Council’s goals for public services. [Increase in spending = -$5,000 for 2008 bottom line]
3. Help low-income seniors pay their water bill with an “actual use” charge. Senior citizens on low fixed incomes could use some special consideration for their high water bills. No matter how little water they actually use, they all have to pay a “minimum use” charge. A better approach would be to ask them to pay for only the water they actually use-- an “actual usage” charge-- and let them forego the minimum. [This affects the water and sewer budgets, which are not directly tied to the tax rate. The program costs would be offset by increased rates for non-city users*].
4. Fund arts-based tourism with tourism dollars, rather than tax dollars. It was recently announced that the Geneva Arts Development Council and Finger Lakes Regional Arts Council are merging and re-structuring their boards. GADC works to promote arts-based tourism and the city has a $400,000 tourism reserve fund to draw on in funding these initiatives. So, why add this to the tax levy when you can draw from existing monies intended for that purpose?* [Decreased tax levy = +10,000 for 2008 bottom line]
5. Use in-house staff and shared services instead of high priced consultants for the Public Safety Engineering Study. With our new, in-house engineer on City staff working with Ontario County engineering staff, we could forego an outsourced consultant for the Public Safety Engineering Study and save tax dollars. [Decreased spending = +$20,000 for 2008 bottom line]

So, let's do the math: Action # 1 yields a net revenue increase of $80,000. Efforts 2, 4 and 5 yield a net spending decrease of $25,000. In total, that's a $105,000 net reduction for the 2008 general fund bottom line. That means $105,000 less property tax dollars needed than what the city manager has proposed.

The $105,000 net savings outlined here would mean a reduction of 1.75% on the tax rate, bringing it DOWN to just under $18.00/1000.

That's no small change!

*the two items indicated here represent modifications of an earlier proposal that did not clearly distinguish between the general, water, and sewer funds, nor did it indicate the difference between the tax levy and the tourism reserve fund.