Columbia County’s recent ruling to deny large tax breaks to the developer of a 565,000-square-foot shopping center is a commendable decision, but it was made for the wrong reasons and it highlights the complexities of offering taxpayer subsidies to promote private commerce in our towns.
The following is a copy of a letter to the Pine Plains Town Planning Board, the lead agency charged with reviewing the potential impacts of Douglas Durst’s proposed 1,000-home subdivision.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Planning Board:
The Durst Organization has produced for you a labyrinth of numbers in its 1,500-page Environmental Impact Statement, all of which paint a glowing portrait of an environmentally sensitive, financially beneficial windfall for our rural communities.
I would like to focus your attention on ten simple, common-sense numbers which, when studied along with supporting data I will submit later, should help to convince you that the Carvel Development will not look anything like the upscale golfing resort proposed and that it could well become a financial disaster for the town, its property owners, its local businesses and the Pine Plains Central School District.
In a recent blitzkrieg of mailings to our homes, the Durst Organization extols the glories of its past accomplishments, the smiling family at its helm and the “environmental” virtues of its proposed Carvel development. But the glossy brochures, which offer a slew of misleading environmental claims and wildly inaccurate financial projections, neglect to tell us anything about the key players overseeing the project, their motivations or their track record in guiding comparable developments.
One of the mass mailings invites us as “dear neighbors” to “meet the Durst family,” and in this and future postings we hope to get to know the Dursts, not their soothing, sepia-toned portraits gracing the brochures, but their capabilities, their character and their business strategy.
We begin our “Durst Watch” series with links to four columns we’ve published since 2005. The first lays out the basic principles for our analysis of the costs and complications of growth in small towns. The other three explore in more detail the primary cause of tax increases brought on by rapid development: the cost of educating children from the new homes who attend the local public schools.
As the slowing U.S. economy curtails municipal tax revenues across the country, many Hudson Valley counties, including Columbia, Dutchess and Rensselaer, are also facing sharp increases in capital spending on roads and buildings.
The dual perils of declining sales taxes, which comprise 30-50% of a county’s tax revenues, and a large backlog of urgent capital projects will likely put a growing burden on property taxpayers, especially in more heavily indebted counties that cannot borrow much money to fill the fiscal gap.
Candidates sparring for local office in next week’s elections face a bewildering array of statistics they can use to tout their own financial achievements or criticize their opponents’ fiscal failures. Though the numbers are often confusing and occasionally misleading, there are legitimate methods of budget analysis that can be helpful in judging the financial performance of incumbent office holders.
As a case in point, we’ve focused on one contested race where finances are at the center of the campaign and where the stakes are high: the race for supervisor of Columbia County’s largest town, Kinderhook, where the four-term incumbent, Douglas McGivney, is running against Gary Strevell, who has served since 2003 as Mayor of Valatie, one of the incorporated villages within the town.
With local elections fast approaching, the time seems apt to highlight findings from our municipal budget research that may prompt voters to ask tough questions of incumbent office holders and may help candidates provide convincing answers.
We’ve compared data for 28 towns and ten villages in Columbia and northern Dutchess counties with the aim of identifying the best and worst municipalities in terms of their recent financial management, a crucial test for any elected official. The data, from the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC), provide preliminary answers to three basic fiscal questions: 1) How high are taxes in the town or village relative to its peer group; 2) How much have the municipality’s property taxes increased over the past three years; and 3) Are large future tax increases likely due to the town government’s failure to invest sufficiently in upgrading its highway department and road network, which typically account for two-thirds of town spending.
The results of our research, tabulated below, offer merely a rough sketch of fiscal performance, a handy reference guide for voters and candidates seeking to assess the strengths and weaknesses of current office holders.
Control of many town boards in our region is up for grabs this November, and with it decisions on proposed zoning ordinances, preservation efforts and assessment standards. In these critical local elections, which will affect the future of your lifestyle here for decades to come, literally a handful of votes can tip the scales.
We urge all readers who own or rent a home here to register and vote in their Hudson Valley towns.
Re-registering to vote from your primary residence to your second home, whether owned or rented, is simple, entirely legal and carries virtually no risk, as a website developed by the New York Democratic Lawyers Council makes clear. Please visit the site, CountryVote.org , which has convincing and authoritative answers to any questions about voting where your second home is located. (The only case where re-registering may cause complications, according to the site, is for rent-controlled tenants in New York City who are already in violation of the program’s guidelines.)
In order to change your registration, all you need to do is fill out the attached Registration Form with your country address. If you are unable to be here on Election Day, it is easy to apply for an Absentee Ballot once you have registered.
If you are an owner or renter of a second home and you are not registered here, please fill out the form and mail it in no later than October 12!
If you are registered here, please remember to vote on November 6!
If you have friends or neighbors who are not registered here and could be, please send them a link to this site today!
I sent the following letter to Pine Plains Supervisor Gregg Pulver, urging his board to eliminate generous incentives to developers in the town's proposed new zoning law.
Supervisor Pulver,
As your Town Board reviews the many controversial land use policies proposed in the Draft Zoning Law, there is one issue that all quarters of the community seem to agree on: a desire to promote more affordable housing for the benefit of Pine Plains residents who would otherwise be unable to buy a home in the town.
But the proposed ordinance, rather than devising a system that offers economic help to deserving residents, instead transfers most of the benefits to large-scale developers through so-called “density bonus” incentives. This seems to run counter to anyone’s interest—except the developers’—and I would urge you to revise the affordable housing regulations currently included in the plan.
Two country neighbors, the towns of Gallatin and Taghkanic in southern Columbia County, have a lot in common: rolling vistas of wooded, sparsely populated hills, abundant farms, and little commercial activity or road traffic to disturb the tranquil surroundings. But beneath their rustic setting, in the realm of budget discipline and financial health, the two adjacent towns are worlds apart.
Hillsdale Supervisor Art Baer’s letter to The Independent newspaper criticizing my last “Views From Gallatin” column takes aim at what he describes as my “superficial analysis and presentation of data” comparing tax rates and other fiscal measures of 28 towns in our region.
I would like to respond to each of his points, but first I would reiterate that the purpose of the budget columns and database is “to shed light on what drives our property taxes, and what we can do to control them” by comparing financial profiles of towns which may be facing very different fiscal challenges. As I wrote in the May 29 column for The Independent, the data, provided by the Office of the State Comptroller, “may not reflect the quality of services offered by different towns.”
"I'd rather be here than anywhere else. To me this is home, and it is wonderful to be here. This is as close to a Norman Rockwell moment as you can imagine. It makes you proud to be a citizen of this town, this state, this nation."
-- Governor Eliot Spitzer speaking at Memorial Day
celebrations in Pine Plains
The Maine legislature has given its approval to a bill that requires cities and towns to evaluate the economic effects of large-scale retail development and to approve only those projects that will not have an adverse impact on jobs, local businesses, and municipal finances. The legislation is the first of its kind in the nation.
Updated town budget data recently released by the Office of the State Comptroller confirms the findings we published in this column last year and identifies the same three towns as the region’s most fiscally challenged: Taghkanic, Hillsdale and, most worrisome, Greenport.
We have made several enhancements to our analysis of the OSC data, designed to better rank the 28 towns in Columbia and northern Dutchess counties on the quality of their fiscal management and the likelihood they will need large property tax increases in the near future.
Our latest study ranks the towns on five key measures: 1) property taxes per capita; 2) total taxes per capita (including county sales tax receipts); 3) general government expenses per capita, which cover most services other than road maintenance and special districts for water, sewer, trash collection, etc.; 4) highway department costs per road mile; and 5) highway capital investment from 2001-2005 compared to the average for the 28 towns.
"Every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it."
-- Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
A nationwide survey of the costs of providing local police services to large shopping centers raises some thorny questions about the proposed Widewaters mega-mall in Greenport and casts doubt on the town’s assurances of “minimal” tax and crime impacts from the project.
The 2006 survey cites widespread evidence that Wal-Mart stores, particularly the newer 200,000-square-foot “super-centers” of the kind considered for Greenport, lead to much more crime and place far greater demands on local police than mall developers or town planning officials usually anticipate.
The high costs of supporting a larger police presence is one of the reasons why centers like the 550,000-square-foot Widewaters plan typically lead to higher property taxes for town homeowners, despite the sizable tax receipts contributed by the new mall’s owners.
The largest commercial development ever to hit the region is on the verge of slipping through the cracks of a comprehensive planning review typically required under state law.
The 565,000-square-foot retail center, slated for a 130-acre site on Route 9 in Greenport, could double traffic congestion and inflict heavy financial damage on town taxpayers and area businesses, according to many studies on the effects of large retail developments in rural areas. With little public concern raised to date, the Greenport Town Planning Board is nearing the end of its preliminary review of the project with no apparent interest in subjecting it to more thorough questioning, analysis and debate.
The debate over zoning, as complex as it is controversial, seems to boil down to two fundamental and closely related questions: 1) Do land use laws deprive individual property owners of their civic rights; and 2) Does more restrictive zoning, as called for by codes now under review in most of our towns, reduce the economic value of the affected properties?
Click on the links that follow to read recent opinions penned on each question.
The Millerton News recently ran a three-part series on developer Douglas Durst’s vision for a “master planned vacation community” on the 2,200-acre Carvel property in the northern Dutchess County towns of Pine Plans and Milan.
The News, official paper of the Town of Pine Plains, also ran a full-page add from Mr. Durst and his family, assuring their “dear neighbors” that the 951-home subdivision would generate net property tax revenues for the surrounding school district and towns and would be a “green” development designed to “maintain the rural character of the area.”
We are reprinting two letters to the newspaper’s editor that challenge Mr. Durst’s claims and urge town planning officials to consider the more likely case that the development will destroy, not preserve, the Carvel property’s natural environment and that it will lead to a dramatic and permanent increase in property taxes. The first letter comes from Becky Thornton, President of the Dutchess Land Conservancy; the second letter
is a brief summary of my own research.
We have also reprinted, with the paper's permission, a copyrighted editorial the News ran in response to the Durst proposal, the largest one of many now under review in our towns that would, if approved, drag the region a long way down the road to suburbanization and create a huge burden on property tax payers.
A survey of county budgets, by far the largest source of local government taxes levied on New York residents, highlights a few counties for their fiscal discipline, singles out others with especially high taxes and invites more in-depth comparisons on spending for specific programs.
Overall, tax revenues in 22 counties located in and around the Hudson Valley grew by 40% from 1999 to 2004 to $680 per person, more than twice the level of town taxes, according to the latest data available from New York’s Office of the State Comptroller (OSC).
As in previous columns that compared budgets for dozens of towns and villages, the county rankings are a preliminary tool that may overlook sound financial or political reasons why one municipality spends more than its peers. The detailed county rankings are available in our "Budget Scorecard Database" under County Budget Scorecard .
This study, like any financial analysis of change, attempts to forecast the future, specifically the future costs to property taxpayers in the Dutchess County village of Millbrook should the village planning board approve a proposed subdivision for some 100 homes on the former Bennett College campus.
(To read the full study, click here .)
Residents of incorporated villages in our region shoulder a heavy fiscal burden for the additional public services they receive, paying in many cases more than twice as much in local property taxes as their neighbors living outside of village lines.
While typical village services-- such as police, road maintenance, street lighting, and trash collection-- are more extensive and more expensive than what towns typically provide non-village taxpayers, village property owners are also saddled with paying for a portion of the surrounding town’s annual budget. On top of higher taxes, village residents pay costly user fees for the municipal water and sewage systems that most villages provide.
As we did last month for 27 rural towns in Columbia and northern Dutchess counties, we have drawn on 2004 budget data from the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) to rank ten villages in the area in terms of their costs to taxpayers. Only one village in our sample— Millbrook in Dutchess County—stands out as an extraordinarily expensive municipality, while the Columbia County Village of Valatie appears to be an example of how to keep taxes low and manage efficient delivery of key public services.
As a follow-up to our last column on town budgets, we've added a table to our "Budget Scorecard Database" that ranks 27 Hudson Valley towns by the amount of money invested over the 2000-2004 period per mile of road in the town.
Our aim is to point out which towns have spent substantially less than average on their road systems and to prompt town officials and citizens to follow up on our statistics with more thorough examination. The table, Town Highway Capital Spending , also highlights those towns which have invested substantially more money than average over the five-year period, another topic for concerned citizens to pursue.
Please read the initial column, Budget Scorecard: Where Does Your Town Rank? , that puts the statistics and their intent into context.
And please send us your comments!
In an ongoing effort to shed light on what drives our property taxes, and what we can do to control them, this column has begun to take a closer look at the annual budgets of the towns, villages, counties and school districts in our Hudson Valley region.
Working with data compiled by the New York Office of the State Comptroller (OSC), we are aiming to measure the fiscal performance of local governments and school districts, compare them to their peers, and identify key factors they may want to address in order to provide public services in more financially productive ways.
This first installment of the “Budget Scorecard” looks at 27 largely rural towns in northern Dutchess and Columbia counties and concludes that a few towns stand out for fiscal prudence-- notably Milan, Red Hook and Livingston—while the relatively poor showing of others-- including Greenport, Taghkanic and Hillsdale—requires further explanation.
A curious study is making the rounds of our communities, promoting the idea that large-scale residential development is actually a benefit to property taxpayers.
Authored by the Dutchess County Economic Development Corporation (EDC), and funded largely by county taxpayers, the study looks at six recent subdivisions in the Hudson Valley to reach this conclusion, which flies in the face of a large body of research showing that newly built houses require far more in costly public services than they provide in local tax revenues.
A growing number of politicians and citizens have criticized both the methods and the message of the study, which the EDC has presented to dozens of local officials as part of its stated mission “to facilitate and expedite the necessary (local government) approval procedures so that new (construction) projects can be developed.”
A close analysis of the EDC’s calculations, coupled with a bit of common sense, indeed shows that the study’s case for development, at least fiscally speaking, is full of holes.
As applications to build thousands of new homes crowd the desks of planning boards in our rural towns, planners and citizens alike are beginning the tricky task of estimating how much these subdivisions are likely to raise our property taxes to pay for the new schools, roads and other public services their future residents would require.
Much of the debate over forecasting the impact of development on our taxes can be boiled down to a single number: how many children from each of the new proposed homes will enroll in our public schools. With school taxes accounting for more than two-thirds of most property tax bills, and with ample evidence that each new home contributes far less in tax revenues than it absorbs in costly public services, the number of additional school students per newly built home-- the “enrollment ratio--” is one of the keys to predicting the financial impact of development.
How the enrollment ratio is calculated, and on what key assumptions it is based, should be the focus of great attention by our town planning officials as they review the onslaught of new subdivisions now before them.
"Please let's not frame this as another 'us vs. them' issue. We are all 'us.'"
-- Enid Futterman of Claverack (in a letter to The Independent on efforts to disrupt support for a state-owned rail trail in Columbia County).
One of the most effective programs for containing growth and preserving farmland through free-market incentives is well into its third year in the northern Dutchess Town of Red Hook, and its financial advantages and political popularity appear to be as compelling as first advertised.
Red Hook, one of the most progressive municipalities in the region when it comes to grappling with the rising costs to taxpayers of rapid development, has meanwhile adopted additional fiscal innovations that deserve close scrutiny by the dozens of neighboring towns now reviewing their land use regulations.
The latest uproar against proposals to expand two “rail trail” networks in Columbia County raises important questions about the cost to taxpayers of improving the trails. Judging by recent letters sent to local newspapers, however, the trail program’s opponents seem to be missing the forest for the trees.
Any net increase in our taxes from improving the rail beds for public use would be minuscule compared to the additional school, town and county property taxes that would be needed to serve the large-scale residential developments now proposed in many towns in our region.
“Local governments in New York State have a wide swathe of authority to invent techniques needed to encourage appropriate uses of the land.”
-- Professor John Nolon
Pace University Land Use Law Center
For more on "impact fees" and other methods for containing the costs of growth, read the March, 2005 "Views From Gallatin" column entiitled Making An Impact.)
"We need to figure out what we want to have happen in the town and write the zoning regulations so it does happen."
--- Scott Chase, Pine Plains Town Zoning Commission
Question: When is a 50-acre parcel of open land on one side of the Shekomeko Valley socked with a $6,000 school tax bill while a comparably desirable lot of the same size, located just a few miles away, carries a levy to the same school district of only $2,000?
Answer: When the method used for determining the land’s value is the fractured, arcane and unjust system of property tax assessment practiced in New York State.
“Where it is clear that the existing physical and financial resources of the community are inadequate to furnish the essential services and facilities which a substantial increase in population requires, there is a rational basis for ‘phased growth.’”
The New York State Court of Appeals (1972)
For further details on phased growth initiatives, read the July 2004 "Views From Gallatin" column entitled The Pace of Growth.
A debate is brewing which, though very technical in nature, seeks to answer a question that will largely determine the future of Pine Plains and many neighboring towns: how will the 951-home Carvel subdivision now under review affect property taxes and the financial well-being of the town and surrounding school district?
Well-trained and expensive consulting teams-- one hired by the town and one by the developer-- are already dueling about how best to study the question in an exercise that is nothing short of forecasting the future profile and behavior of the thousands of new residents who would inhabit the homes on the former Carvel estate and more than double the population of the town.
Dear Readers,
Welcome to our new website!
You'll find the latest posting of my monthly column, "Views From Gallatin," as well as all previous columns in the Features archive. You'll also see a new, more frequent posting, "For the Record," and an array of resources, links, news sites and references under Other Resources. Sign up today for your free membership!
If you're new to the "Views From Gallatin" series, a good place to start is an early column entitled "Once Upon A Time…".
LittleTownViews.com is designed as a community catalyst and information resource dedicated to the proposition that we all have the right to live and raise our children in a small-town setting.
The site is neither pro-growth nor anti-development in its vision, neither right nor left in its political leaning, neither for nor against “progress.” Rather, our central view, based on in-depth research and level-headed analysis, is that runaway growth of the sort proposed for many of our rural towns would lead to substantially higher property taxes, more crowded schools, less affordable housing, and little economic gain other than for the developers and builders whose high returns we, the taxpayers, would be forced to subsidize.
