If you live in Rotterdam, chances are you received your school tax bills and chances are you are not happy, because your taxes are very high or because you realized you have been overcharged for years.
The school board president and town officials have been fielding angry phone calls from residents who have just received their tax bills for the past week.
Mohonasen Superintendent Kathleen Spring said she has been answering phone calls from frustrated and confused residents since school began on Thursday, Sept. 6, and town Supervisor Steven Tommasone said during the past week, he has answered about 100 phone calls and e-mails from residents with questions about their tax bills.
Spring and Denise Swezey, assistant superintendent for business, presented tax rate information to about 30 residents at Mohonasen’s school board meeting Monday, Sept 10. According to their information, the average Rotterdam homeowner who lives within the Mohonasen School District will pay school taxes at a rate of $14.64 per $1,000 of assessed value.
Residents were most confused about their tax bills because when the first tax disclosure notices were mailed in March, it said school tax rates would be set at $8.89.
Both Spring and Swezey said they had no idea how GAR Associates, who did the town’s reassessment or the town came up with that number, but it was clearly wrong.
We said since the beginning of our budget process that tax rates would be between $12 and $14, Spring said.
Tax rates come from dividing the total assessed value of properties within a district by the tax levy.
A school district’s tax levy is the total amount of money the district will be collecting from the taxpayers. Swezey said regardless of how much individual taxes increase, the district collects the same amount. This year Mohonasen’s tax levy is $20,821,340. For the 2006-2007 school year the tax levy was $19,972,671, an increase of $848,669 or 4.25 percent.
Swezey said the increase in the tax levy usually is why people’s taxes increase, but this year another factor ` the reassessment ` added to the increase in school taxes.
For example, if school tax rates remained the same, but the reassessment still took place, taxes for some residents would still increase. A resident with a home assessed at $135,593 with a school tax rate of $14.64 would pay $1,976.40 in school taxes. If that same resident’s home was reassessed the next year at $175,000 and they still paid a tax rate of $14.64 the homeowner would pay $2,562 in school taxes ` an increase of $585.60.
According to Swezey, the increase in this year’s school tax levy is only a small portion of the increase in school taxes. She said if the reassessment had been done a year ago, this year’s tax rate increase would be 60 cents.
Residents also expressed concern that Mohonasen did not adopt the Homestead/Non-Homestead Act, which was adopted by the town and by the Schalmont School District.
School board members said they did not want to put an added burden on the small business owners that make up a majority of businesses in the Mohonasen district.
`We didn’t want to drive business away because the next year, the tax burden would fall greater on the homeowners,` former school board president Nancy Del Prado said.
According to Swezey, about 21 percent of taxable properties in the Mohonasen district were non-residential compared to the 52 percent of taxable properties in the Schalmont district.
Swezey said if the school board had adopted the Homestead/Non-Homestead provision it would have meant a tax rate savings of about 60 cents for residents and a tax rate increase of about $3.60 for business owners.
Former town Supervisor John Paolino said if residents were to blame anyone it should be him because his administration passed the resolution to allow for the reassessment.
`Assessments at full value mean we are taxing people fairly and equally. We are treating everyone the same, and morally that is the right thing to do,` he said.
Before the reassessment, some homeowners had their properties assessed incorrectly or over- assessed, leaving them paying a greater share of the levy than others. Those people can expect to see a decrease in their tax bills.
This year the state adopted the 2007 Middle Class STAR rebate program, which can save residents of middle incomes about $300 on their tax bill. Residents have to fill out and file the form by Nov. 30. A link to more information about the program is available on the school’s Web site at www.mohonasen.org.
Del Prado said she was also surprised at the number of other exemptions available for residents. Those exemptions are available on the town’s Web site at www.rotterdamny.org. “