At an IDA (Industrial Development Agency) meeting sometime in the past year, city treasurer Heather Campbell explained that, in the years that she has been in office, she has seen the Hudson City School District's share of the property tax pie get increasingly bigger, because every year HCSD increases its budget by as much as New York State law allows, whereas the City of Hudson and Columbia County try to hold their budgets in check and not increase the tax burden on property owners.
This year, it seems Hudson has decided to claim a bigger piece of the property tax pie, at least as it pertains to Hudson property owners. Intel from meetings of the BEA (Board of Estimate and Apportionment) is that the City of Hudson, following the example of HCSD, will be increasing property taxes in 2025 by as much as the law allows: 2.9 percent. That's tentative, of course. The city budget for 2025 has not yet been finalized.
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ReplyDeleteThe City of Hudson and the Hudson City School District finally entering into a game of one-upmanship? In this battle of titans I foresee both of them winning.
ReplyDeleteProperty owners will lose, but alas, that's a small price to pay.
Figures. This is what dysfunctional districts do: they go for the purse before educating the kids, playing on the ignorance of a population that still buys the discredited belief that poverty causes bad ELA scores. --peter meyer
ReplyDeleteI need to clarify the term "dysfunctional," which applies to academics in this context. Districts like Hudson, where some 2/3 of students read below grade level, can be considered dysfunctional because there is simply no excuse for such horrifying numbers. Too many schools are able to right those numbers -- e.g. 2/3 of kids read at grade level -- without spending $50k per kid. The dysfunction is at the top; administrative leadership and BOE are simply not doing their jobs. --peter meyer
DeleteWhom, exactly, is either entity representing? OK, that's somewhat rhetorical. The school district clearly and strenuously represents its employees, just about to the exclusion of everything else. The City, on the other hand, is a murkier picture though I suspect the answer is, increasingly, the same.
ReplyDeleteSo it seems a fair question: what is the City going to do with a nearly 3% increase in receipts? Because, while it's clear City Hall may not understand these things, that 3% is going to come out of school supplies, and dinners out, new tires and property maintenance. Everything has to be paid for. Property owners will pass the increase along to their tenants (always reasonable to increase prices as costs rise). Of course, on the commercial side, where demand always outstrips supply in Hudson, landlords are free to raise their prices as high as they like. As the cost of living in Hudson continues to rise faster and faster, who will be left to live and work here? Just the very wealthy.
Who, again, does City Hall work for?
Because the City has adopted the Good Cause Eviction Law, landlords will not be free to raise their prices "as high as they like." The law does allow rent increases beyond the inflation index in consideration of increases in property taxes.
DeleteGCE only applies to residential tenants. Commercial landlords are free to contract.
DeleteSorry, John. I missed the fact that you were talking about commercial properties.
DeleteJohn, you are missing the bigger picture here: City of Hudson is trying to answer the age-old question of whether GCE is merely inconsequential or actively detrimental by raising property taxes to the extent allowed by law while GCE is putting restrictions on landlords by how much they can raise rents.
DeleteI, as an impoverished Hudson tenant, can't wait to see what this research will yield. Will my apartment's rent simply go up by a few percent or will the unit just go poof as my landlord is having enough of this and pulling out?
I shall report my findings to Claire Cousin and Gary Purnhagen for their personal edification. It seems they might appreciate this type of wisdom.
It's time to seriously think about selling.
ReplyDeleteTo say that in recent history the city has tried to restrain its budget is being generous. If passed, next year's tax increase would follow this year's 3.9% increase. So a nearly 7% increase in property taxes in two years. Let's not forget the other taxes, I mean fees: The water and sewer bill has increased 36% in just two years. And next year, we'll also start getting billed for the Sidewalk Improvement District, aka the "fixing negligent owner's sidewalk fund," taking hundreds of dollars more from the bottom line of residents.
ReplyDeleteSince the mayor has been in office the overall budget has grown 9.6% The claim that taxes haven't been raised until last year is just semantics, federal Covid stimulus, and sleight of hand accounting. Since the last city wide assessment in 2019, the assessor has been aggressively reassessing to market value any property that was recently sold. These (illegal in NYS) "Welcome Stranger" assessments increase revenue from newer residents without having to raise the mil rate, thus saying they're not "raising taxes." Longer term residents see their bill relatively the same, so they don't pay attention to the budget or feel the pain in the short term. The problem is, especially since property values have skyrocketed post Covid, the tax rolls are very unequal and you have neighbors paying nearly double what their other neighbors are paying in similar properties. There will come a time when the state will force the city to do another citywide revaluation and unsuspecting homeowners will get crushed when their tax bill reflects the real growth in spending. This is only part of the ticking time bomb of expenses that are in our future. The unrealized costs of deferred assessments, sidewalk maintenance, sewer separation, pilots giveaways to developers, and subsidized housing obligations will come for the tab long after this administration hopes to be in higher office or nonprofit patronage.
Right on, Union Jack, you clearly get it. The level of non-management the city’s ’leaders” have engendered and are willing to tolerate only underscores why a city manager is the only rational choice for the city going forward.
DeleteI have no doubt that an audit by the State Comptroller's Office would reveal poor accounting practices, even errors, throughout City Hall and that an audit by a private consultant would find rampant waste, inefficiencies, possible financial shenanigans, mismanagement and/or zero management. No one is paying attention, and yes, only a city manager can solve that problem, certainly not the mayor we have now or will have in the future. The mayor's office is intentionally made powerless so that shenanigans can proliferate and spread like a virus.
ReplyDeleteI actually have a lot of faith in our treasurer and she’s one of the rare locally elected officials from our small talent pool that has professional experience in her actual role. I can’t even imagine where we’d be without her diligent accounting.
DeleteBut I agree about a city manager. We are the second smallest incorporated city of the 50 in New York. We don’t have the talent pool or a large enough civil service corp to elect a competent chief executive. It turns every mundane decision overly political and also leaves a vacuum of management over the individual city departments.
Incremental extortion mafia ...
ReplyDelete