The following statement was released this afternoon by Mayor Joe Ferris:
When approved by the Common Council, my office will begin the long overdue and much needed revaluation process. The first since 2019, the 2028 revaluation will go a long way in ensuring all properties in our city are assessed accurately. With an equalization rate among the lowest in Columbia County, property owners--and in turn, renters--in Hudson shoulder an unnecessarily heavy tax burden when compared to our neighbors. Simply put, the lower our municipal equalization rate is, the higher the taxes levied on us proportionately by taxing entities like the school district. By working with the Columbia County Real Property Tax Service (RPTS) on this revaluation, the City not only saves money but gets the on-the-ground expertise that only RPTS brings to the table. I look forward to sharing more information as we move along the revaluation process.
Credit to Mayor Ferris and Mayoral Aide Martin for a real first step.
ReplyDeleteReval ends the Welcome Stranger Tax on Hudson's newest residents (see the WS Tax lawsuit list): a cheap fix (~$50k?) that treats residents equally and cuts legal bills.
Kamal avoided it; Ferris is shouldering it, as Rector did. Better late than never. (Year one of a second term is tough, or his successor inherits the sticky wicket.)
But a fairer split is not a lower total tax bill... Reval redistributes the burden; only the BEA can shrink it by spending less. Will this be the first year we spend more than $20m?
So the HCHC leaders, HCSD pro tax boosters, and other "progressive" government and tax expanders should now consider helping the BEA (Ferris, Campbell, Morris) hold the levy flat or cut it. If they care about "displacement".
"City" to Town comp is imperfect, sure, but Claverack runs under $1k per resident and Hudson ~$3k. Where does the extra $2k go?
That ratio holds roughly for a comparison to Kinderhook and Chatham cost per resident.
A fair assessment with a flat or falling levy is the only version where nobody's taxes jump, or the hollowing out of Hudson's working middle class accelerates.
That $1M Youth Center, 40 kids and a dozen union employees, is 15 to 20% of the city property tax levy.
p.s. Strip out HPD entirely (they are singled out in the budget while other departments are commingled, which is unfair and historical, not CFO fault) and Hudson still spends 3x Claverack.
Michael C. Plenty of facts here to errata... which one is the one we want you to "correct"...
Who is Michael C and how would they know which facts you want them to correct?
DeleteTime to hire some new “editors”!
Does Claverack have a lot of public infrastructure to maintain? How many retirement pensions are they funding? What are the median and average assessed values of homes in Claverack? Why does Hudson rank 41st out of 62 cities in the state comptroller’s most recent benchmarking report if property owners here are so disproportionately burdened?
What is the source for, specifically, the "Comptroller's most recent benchmarking"?
DeleteA link, please.
We call you C because a B or an A is earned for an original idea or merit, not errata.
Yes, Hudson pays for past (bad) decisions.
Most can be unmade.
Mayor Ferris can choose NOT to continue the "tradition" of randomly making parking free in December and use that revenue to pay for the tax reval.
Michael X: Claverack has 100s of miles of roads to maintain, salt, sand and plow. Like most towns, this is its largest municipal expense (with salaries). As for “pensions to fund” — stock market is way up (strangely) and this has a direct and proportionally positive impact on municipal contributions to pension funds (ie when the market is up, contributions go down because the market makes up the difference).
DeleteBut the bottom line between towns and cities is basically services. You may think the youth center is the greatest thing since sliced cheese and worth all the lucre in the treasury … but it consumes an inordinate percentage of the budget for a minuscule served population with no protection for the city’s taxpayers viz children from surrounding communities who, for whatever reason, are from families that are ok milking their neighbors.
Why is Hudson only as overburdened as it is? Because the services we provide are limited. There’s police, fire and youth center. That’s most of the budget outside personnel expenses (salaries and healthcare expenses). What other services does the city provide? Senior center is a small outlay. The library (which for all intents and purposes is wholly funded by Hudson taxpayers (Greenport seems to have a low literacy rate or an antipathy towards libraries or both).
That’s it. No garbage collection. No public transport (and certainly no mass transit).
But we have a large fleet of cars and trucks and a large workforce (27 uniformed police for a city of 5500 folks — much higher proportion of police to civilians than NYC for example).
For decades, this city has been mis- and poorly managed. The errors pile up. The first step towards budgetary and fiscal responsibility is to settle our revenues. Twenty-five percent of our municipal budget is paid by property taxes.
Enlisting the RPTS office to do the reveal is a good idea. Mark and his staff are highly trained, locally knowledgeable and accessible. Of course if my taxes good up they’ll have made a mistake somewhere (hah!).
I’m not usually one to give a man a fish but here you go:
DeleteEffective Property Tax Rates of All New York State Cities:
https://seethroughny.net/benchmarking/local-government-spending-and-revenue/rankings/2021/statewide/all/cities/2/Effective-Property-Tax-Rate
“These data are four years old, this is why you’re Michael D-“.
Yes, 2021 is the most recently available data set. But Hudson has never been in the Top 20 in this category; I doubt very much that it moved up 40 spots in four years.
Feel free to prove me wrong on that. But you’ll have to actually do and show the work. An enterprising person interested in learning more could figure out the 2025 Effective Property Tax Rate with easily accessible data.
Of course the reval is a good idea. That doesn’t also mean that all of the rhetoric around Hudson’s “tax burden” is valid.
It’s very curious to me that when tenants leave because rents skyrocket, some folks in these comments see it as a normal outcome of private market supply and demand, and that’s too bad for those people. But when homeowners move because they feel taxes are too high, suddenly the gentry are up in arms.
If only you cared as much about the baristas as you did the coffee.
Michael C,
DeleteWe do not mind your slightly dated figures shared in good faith.
We are all often forced to use 4 year old data because newer reports are missing or not online. This happened to us last week and CEDC Chris pointed it out fairly.
The issue is different: you cited the Empire Center, a private think tank, and dressed it up as the official NY State Comptroller's benchmarking report.
The Comptroller supplies the raw (now outdated) data.
The private "Empire Center" then does its own work on it, converting assessed values to full value, calculating effective rates, ranking the results. The (old) data is the Comptroller's. The math and the framing not, in contradiction to what you implied. This was likely not an intentionally deceptive act but since you are Mr Errata... just use the primary source next time or use the correct title and link if it is your primary argument.
Demanding our sources while misnaming your own is a curious standard.
That said... your point is directionally fair and thank you for making it.
Hudson is not the worst-taxed city in New York, and we never said it was.
Our argument is narrower, and you did not touch it.
First, the value-to-tax ratio: it is not just the relative size of the bill to neighboring towns in Columbia County, but what the tax dollars buy, or do not buy.
Second, the inequality within Hudson, the Welcome Stranger Tax that falls hardest on the newest owners, which is unequal and arguably illegal. And a choice.
On the baristas: we never said we did not care about them. You assigned us a sentiment we never expressed, then rebutted it. That is a straw man and sloppy. You are obviously smarter than that.
So this was classic Michael, A through X: errata that did not change the point, misleading sources, and offered no new idea.
A sincere request Michael.
You seem well informed, and you clearly care about Hudson.
What do you think the current mayor, the Council President, or the Board of Estimate and Apportionment (BEA), or any Department Head, can actually do to make Hudson better for residents?
Or do you think Hudson is doing a fine job already, and your real quarrel is with the Hudson commentariat and our ideas for driving more value?
If you can find errors or discrepancies in the Empire Center’s work, please share what they are.
DeleteMy real quarrel, if Carole permits it to be shared (and he did ask…), is ideological pablum being advertised as non-partisan “common sense”. HCS (the “platform” not the commenter) owes a large thematic debt to folks like Thomas Sowell and Bari Weiss; these are obvious and influential figures in American conservatism.
For those unfamiliar with Weiss, it’s worth a small Google dive to learn more about the founder of the “Free Press”, from which HCS takes so much of its inspiration. John Oliver’s show dedicated one of their long form segments to her; well worth a watch.
I was less familiar with Rob Henderson, originator of the “luxury belief” concept that HCS endorses. But I got curious and learned that Mr. Henderson is big on the conservative podcasts; his wiki namechecks Jordan Petersen and hey what do you know: Bari Weiss. Henderson is currently a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. One of their big projects is making it easier to charge protestors with felonies. They call it “civil terrorism”.
Of course, just because a person (or a platform) shares a few ideas with some problematic entities doesn’t meant they endorse everything those entities believe. But there certainly is a theme.
These are the least of my objections to the general tone of the HCS platform and identity; I’m trying to tone it down for the sake of decorum.
Intellectual dishonesty irks me. Hence the quarrel.
We asked you what the mayor, the Council President, or the BEA could actually do for Hudson.
DeleteYou answered with voodoo hands and tone policing, waved over our (partial) bibliography.
And what a scary, incriminating bibliography. Sowell: African American Marine Corps veteran of the Korean War, raised in Harlem poverty, a former Marxist who spent his career (Harvard AB, Columbia MA, UChicago PhD) studying which economic systems work. Didn't he also attend a NY public high school...
Henderson: mixed-race foster child, enlisted airman, Yale on the GI Bill, PhD at Cambridge. Man with a Substack.
Weiss: NYT and WSJ alumna whose Free Press, founded with her wife, sold to Paramount for $150 million, 4 years after launch; she now runs CBS News.
We also lean on Steven Pinker, Harvard psychologist and humanist. Quarrel with him or Canadians in general, next? Did you see our Bastiat post?
If citing these people makes us a boogeyman, the boogeyman is mainstream America, and you are the odd one out.
Congratulations on the unmasking, though. A publication that openly cites mainstream economists turns out to believe... checks notes, in mainstream economics of supply and demand.
Notice your method: X cites Y, Y once stood near Z, Z disagrees with me lawfully and civilly, therefore X is suspect and due for excommunication.
Association is not argument.
A dozen comments in, across many Gossips articles, you have not named one dishonest claim, just errata.
We footnote our sources, publish our data, and link our strongest critics by name. We propose policies that make other towns and states richer and more free.
Your charge is "intellectual dishonesty"; your evidence is your own poor reasoning and a personal distaste for individuals, never the merit of their ideas.
No detective work was needed to find our point of view, our diagnosis of Hudson (Municipal Capture), or our proposed remedy.
Unlike almost any local politician or publication (or you, Michael) we already wrote it down:
-> hudsoncommonsense.com/aboutus
-> hudsoncommonsense.com/manifesto
Centrist classical liberalism, in the lineage of the pamphlet/book our name salutes:
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil" (Paine, 1776).
So a standing offer, again.
Write your critique of our philosophy, tone, "platform and identity", whatever you take issue with, ideally a specific policy position, and we publish it in full as a Guest Op-Ed, unedited in substance, stylized IG panels if you like.
Do it anonymously if you prefer with a pseudonym; write.12534.org.
Shared facts. Different opinions. Let's disagree better. Happy Flag Day, sir.
~
P.S. What exactly is a "problematic entity"? And who decides?
Is it HCSD, at $42,000 a year per pupil it fails? Or the ~$1m Youth Center for 40 kids and a dozen unionized workers that consumes roughly 1 in 5 property tax dollars.
Or is it any institution that disagrees with your world view, a view you have yet to defend with facts or reason?
p.p.s Now granted, "Common Sense" is a cheeky name if you reject our notion of common sense.
So did Paine's pamphlet seem cheeky to the Crown, and the Free Press launched under the same name. The remedy is open to you: write why our common sense is not common sense.
And gently, before you widen the hunt, and since satire is one of our tools against prejudice and closed minds:
NPR is mainly Coastal, mainly Corporate-underwritten, and mainly Podcasts. Neither National, nor Public, nor Radio. Just CCP: Coastal Corporate Podcasts.
Bumper stickers forthcoming for area Subarus ;-)
This feels pretty pointless. If Bari Weiss being handpicked by Larry Ellison to run CBS News is a sign of merit to you, so be it. Most observers see it for what it is.
DeleteI’ll let Hudsonians decide if your ideas, perspective and values align with theirs. Judging by the result of the school vote after you posted a four part story that you worked on for four months, it’s not looking too good.
There was one funded slate (and union), no opponent, on a random Tuesday in May, with the district's own megaphone doing the advertising and one of the county's 5 largest payrolls voting its own budget through.
DeleteCalling that a W is like Moscow/Beijing/Havana toasting a referendum it wrote, scheduled, and counted itself.
The result was never in doubt. That was the take-away from our HCSD Municipal Capture series, not its failure.
And think it through: if we held the majority view in Hudson, we would not need to exist. (And we would likely be on the wrong side of history, given... well, Hudson's history.)
Hudson's majorities spent decades nodding along while the bills piled up, missing critical economic waves.
This city once rivaled Albany; it now begs from billionaires in Manhattan and Albany politicians for handouts.
Paine was not on the Crown's ballot either, and the Crown did not field free and fair election, kinda like HCSD, but with Received Pronunciation of the day, and an education.
On merit: Weiss wrote for 2 of the country's biggest papers, built a news startup that sold for $150 million in 4 years, and now runs CBS News. If that does not count as merit, the word just means "agrees with Michael".
Though we suspect the grievance is fresher: she just cleaned house at 60 Minutes, and your heroes did not make the cut. Sad.
So, 12 comments in, Michael: still no idea, no fix for Hudson, no answer to the one question we asked and was at issue here.
When you are ready to build shared knowledge, or to offer one standalone idea of your own, we would love to publish you.
No need to have sold a 9-figure media company, graduated from an Ivy, or stood up to captured national institutions.
One good idea for Hudson will do.
Happy Flag Day Weekend 🇺🇸
That's pretty big news!
ReplyDeleteThat said, I don't agree with the mayor's claim that this will lower Hudson's portion of the school tax. The opposite will happen. Greenport's school taxes on average went up by 50% last year when the town finished its reassessment. Hudson's on average went down (I checked around 20 different Hudson properties).
Either way, this is the correct and long-overdue move. I expect this to be a very painful process and this will ultimately have a massive impact on the composition of the city's population.
Max - since you refuse to move to Hudson... could you consider a run for Greenport Supervisor or Greenport Town Board (assuming the recent kerfuffle will open some seats).
DeleteSimply building bridges between Greenport and Hudson will go a long way... whether next year or next decade, both will come under budget pressure and will be forced to consolidate and share more services. (not merge, not become a combined political entity, Greenport is too wise for that, and yes, that requires an act in Albany).
The question is... now and voluntarily, or in a decade under duress.
Whatever my personal ambitions may be, they will have to be carefully matched with reality. On such reality is that there's a significant and surprising learning curve attached to Greenport. It has a smaller population than Hudson but is geographically quite sprawling. I know very little for example about the part of Greenport south of Hudson.
DeleteIn the meantime, I recommend everyone to watch Greenport carefully in the upcoming months all the way up to the November elections. There's a good chance the Republicans will lose the majority in the county and that's on the back of Greenport likely electing a Democratic supervisor.
I think that'll increase the likelihood that Greenport and Hudson can cooperate more.
Well, you are intellectually honest and read a lot. So please consider a civic tour of duty.
DeleteThis is great news! The County Real Property Office knows the City's real property data better than any outside firm. It's likely the reval will cost us less with the County, as well. Bravo!!
ReplyDeleteIndeed Kristal -
DeleteDo you think the residents advocating for the Youth Center and higher taxes / more programs, will realize in 2028/2029/2030 when many long-term residents are forced to sell, that it is partially due their advocacy for growing discretionary government expenditure?
HCS, I would guess not. There seems to be a dearth of critical thinking these days. But it is surprising that people don't attribute Hudson's perceived expensiveness to the high tax burden here. On the other hand, if there's anything I learned during the last reval, people generally have little understanding of how the tax system in NYS works.
DeleteThat is so true. It is more complex than meets the eye, on several dimensions.
DeleteHopefully this time no one gets physically assaulted...
Kristal, not to give away my age, but I learned about the property tax eval system in 1978, before I owned a house: California proposition 18 which put a "cap on the tax rate, 2% maximum annual increases, and reassessment only when property is sold or new construction is completed." (https://www.empower.com/the-currency/life/california-proposition-13-proposition-19-what-to-know)
DeleteWhat is so sad here is that the Mayor who could not articulate what he stood for (the last question at the 1st ward meeting last fall), has also dropped the ball on the biggest scandal of the evaluation: the stupid schools that we are paying for. He promised at that meeting that he would take up the education issue -- which many people agree are scaring off businesses -- and even agreed to meet with me about educating our kids. Instead, he blew me off and opted for an optics program grant of $1.5 million (more of our money being mispent). As to the reval process, it is a broken system and always has been. California tried to fix it in 1978 when it decreed that the only way to know what a house is worth is what it sells for or a reconstruction project is finished. Let's stop the injustice of incompetent assessors deciding what a house is worth and then -- what is worse -- inflicting that evaluation on hundreds of people who don't want to sell.
ReplyDelete