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Town salaries to get review
Tommasone appoints group to report back in March
BY JUSTIN MASON Gazette Reporter
Reach Gazette reporter Justin Mason at 395-3113 or jmason@dailygazette.net

    A five-person committee will study salary increases for town officials, Supervisor Steve Tommasone said.
    Named to the committee this week were former board member Diane Marco, resident Kevin March, Planning Board Chairman Lawrence DiLallo, Tops Diner owner Evan Christo and Paul Brown, an inspector with the Schenectady County Sheriff's Department. Tommasone appointed the group and said "I think it will offer a good cross section of the town."
    The committee will review salaries for elected and appointed offi - cials in comparison to other similar municipalities; the report is due in March.
    Rotterdam board members earn $10,000 annually, while the town's part-time supervisor position carries a $16,000 salary. In November, town officials voted 3-2 to amend the 2008 budget to give each board position — though not the supervisor — a $5,000 per year raise.
    Town Attorney Gerard Parisi later advised the board it would need to adopt a local law before legally approving raises for themselves. Absent one member during a vote last month, the board was deadlocked on the local law and effectively quashed the push for raises.
    Proponents argued the board positions haven't received salary increases in more than 17 years. The positions also don't carry any health benefits, which some board members claim as further justifi cation for raises.
    Similar-sized towns across the Capital Region vary greatly when it comes to the salaries afforded to supervisors and board members. In Glenville, the closest-sized town to Rotterdam in Schenectady County, board members earn $6,817 annually, while the supervisor is paid $14,094, according to the 2008 town budget. However, the town incorporates a full-time manager who earns $90,000 per year.
    With its 4,800 residents, Niskayuna is significantly smaller than Rotterdam and pays its board members $10,450. The town is alone in Schenectady County in employing a full time supervisor, who earns $53,000.
    Board members Guilderland, with about 32,000 residents, earn $20,457 per year and usually receive a 3 percent cost of living increase. The town also employs a full-time supervisor who earns $98,007, Town Clerk Rosemary Centi said.
    Nearby in Bethlehem, with roughly 31,000, board members earn $13,561 per year and a full-time supervisor is paid $102,779 annually. Town Clerk Kathleen Newkirk said board members usually receive 3 percent raises each year, depending on the budget cycle.
    “We've had years that there were not raises," She said. "It all depends on the economy.”

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Understanding the Equalization Rate

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Printable  
In New York State, the property tax is a local tax, raised and spent locally to finance local governments and public schools. While the State does not collect or receive any direct benefit from the property tax, this tax is still of major importance as the largest single revenue source for the support of municipal and school district services. More than $26 billion is raised in local property taxes across the state annually. (Also see, The Real Property Tax Primer and the 2001 Annual Report)

The New York State Office of Real Property Services (ORPS) is statutorily obligated to administer an equalization program in order to assure equitable property tax allocation among nearly 4,000 taxing jurisdictions in New York State, and to insure the proper allocation of State Aid to Education funds, among other purposes. Equalization seeks to measure the relationship of locally assessed values to an ever-changing real estate market. Each year, ORPS calculates equalization rates for each of the state’s more than 1,200 assessing units.

Why is equalization necessary?
Equalization is necessary in New York State because: (1) there is no fixed percentage at which property must be assessed; (2) not all municipalities assess property at the same percentage of market value; and (3) taxing jurisdictions, such as most school districts, do not share the same taxing boundaries as the cities and towns that are responsible for assessing properties. Most of the state’s more than 700 school districts distribute their taxes among segments of several municipalities, many of which have different levels of assessment. The number of municipal segments in a school district can range from one to fifteen or more.

What is an equalization rate?
At its simplest, an equalization rate is the state’s measure of a municipality’s level of assessment (LOA). This is the ratio of total assessed value (AV) to the municipality’s total market value (MV). The municipality determines the AV; the MV is estimated by the state. The equalization rate formula is:

Total Assessed Value (AV)  

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  =  Equalization Rate
Total Market Value (MV)  

Equalization rates do not indicate the degree of uniformity among assessments within a municipality. (More information regarding uniformity is available from Fair Assessments - A Guide for Property Owners.)

What does your equalization rate mean?
An equalization rate of 100 means that the municipality is assessing property at 100 percent of market value.
An equalization rate of less than 100 means that the municipality’s total market value is greater than its assessed value.
An equalization rate of greater than 100 means that the total assessed value for the municipality is greater than its total market value.
There would be no need for equalization if all municipalities assessed all property at 100 percent of market value every year.

Find the equalization rate for your municipality or school district.

What is the relationship between the State’s equalization rate and the municipality’s level of assessment?
In New York State each municipality is authorized to assess at market value or some fraction of market value. A level of assessment (LOA) of 50 percent means that assessments are at half of market value; an LOA of 100 percent means a community is assessing at 100 percent of market value. Regardless of the LOA chosen by a municipality, all of the assessments in the municipality are required by law to be at a uniform percentage of market value.

Equalization rates are the state’s measure of each municipality’s LOA. Each local assessor is required by law to state the municipal LOA on each year’s assessment roll. The state determines the equalization rate by analyzing the locally stated LOA. In accordance with national standards, ORPS reviews the work of the assessor and determines whether the stated LOA is within adequate tolerances to be used as the equalization rate. If certain criteria are met, the LOA becomes the rate. In municipalities where ORPS cannot accept or confirm the LOA, ORPS uses its own independent estimate of total market value to compare to the total assessed value.

What is the benefit of having the locally determined LOA accepted as the equalization rate?
Where assessors are accurately stating the LOA on the tentative assessment roll, they will be indicating the equalization rate upon which school taxes are distributed. When municipalities keep assessments up-to-date each year, they will be adjusting assessed values to reflect market changes, resulting in a consistent LOA and equalization rate from year to year.

What does it mean when your municipality’s equalization rate decreases?
A falling equalization rate means that market values are rising faster than assessed values. Keeping assessments up-to-date annually can result in consistent equalization rates each year.

Why do equalization rates need to be established each year?
The Real Property Tax Law requires that annual State equalization rates be established for each county, city, town and village. Equalization rates are calculated each year to reflect that year’s assessment roll and current market values for each assessing unit.

What are equalization rates used for?
Aside from apportionment of taxes among municipal segments of school districts and counties, and distribution of State Aid for Education, some of the less recognized uses of equalization rates include:

ü establishment of tax and debt limits;
ü allocation of costs, such as for jointly operated hospitals among participating localities or an injury to a volunteer firefighter, among others;
ü determination of state assessments (special franchise) or approval of local assessments (state-owned land);
ü determination of ceilings (railroad and agricultural values) and exemptions;
ü determination of level of STAR exemptions;
ü apportionment of sales tax revenues and joint indebtedness; and
ü as evidence in court proceedings on the issue of assessment inequity and small claims assessment review hearings.

May the equalization rate be used in an assessment appeal?
Yes. Property owners in New York State (except in Nassau County and New York City) may use the equalization rate as one piece of evidence in assessment grievance cases before the Board of Assessment Review and in State Supreme Court. Residential property owners also may use the State equalization rate in assessment cases brought under the provisions of Small Claims Assessment Review. More information on assessment challenges is available in ORPS’s publication entitled “What To Do If You Disagree With Your Assessment.”

How do equalization rates relate to school property taxes?
The equalization rate is used to estimate the total market value of an entire taxing jurisdiction and/or segments of jurisdictions. The following formula is used to estimate a municipality’s total market value:

Current Total Assessed Value  

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  =    Total Market Value Estimate (also known as Equalized Full Value)
Current Equalization Rate  

In order for a school district to fairly distribute its property tax levy (the total amount of school taxes to be collected), the levy needs to be divided in proportion to the total market value of each municipal segment. This allows for an equitable distribution of taxes based upon the market value of each municipality or segment.

For example School District AB needs to raise $1 million through property taxes (thus, a levy of $1 million). The district contains all of Town A and all of Town B. Each town has a total assessed value of $10 million. If the $1 million tax levy simply were allocated on the basis of the assessed values, the taxpayers in both towns would evenly split the levy, with each town paying $500,000.

However, through the equalization process, the state determines that that the two towns have different levels of assessment.  Town A has an equalization rate of 33.33 and Town B has an equalization rate of 50.00.



Towns A and B can be compared for the purpose of dividing the $1 million school district tax levy between them:

   Town A
Town B

Assessed Value (AV) of each Town  $10 million $10 million
Equalization Rate of each Town  33.33 50.00
Market Value of each Town  $30 million $20 million
Market Value of School District AB = $50 million  
Percent of Market Value (and, therefore, percent of levy) for each Town  60% 40%
Tax Levy to be raised from each Town  $600,000 $400,000
Tax Rate for each Town (Tax Levy ÷ Assessed Value) x 1000  $60 per $1000 AV $40 per $1000 AV

You can see that Town A is responsible for 60 percent ($30 million ÷ $50 million) of the full value in School District AB, and Town B is responsible for 40 percent ($20 million ÷ $50 million) of the full value. This means that the taxpayers in Town A will have to pay a total of $600,000 (60% of the $1 million tax levy) and those in Town B will have to pay $400,000 (40% of the $1 million tax levy).

It is the change in a town's total market value, as reflected in the equalization rate, relative to the change in the market value of other municipalities in a taxing jurisdiction, such as a school district, that may cause a particular town's share of the tax levy to increase or decrease. If one municipality's market value increases, but all the other municipalities in the taxing jurisdiction increase to a larger degree, then the first municipality's share of the tax levy will decline.

For more information
To learn more about equalization, assessments and other aspects of property tax adminstration, you may wish to talk with your assessor or county director of real property tax services.  More detailed information also is available online.


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NYS Office of Real Property Services
16 Sheridan Avenue
Albany, NY 12210-2714
(51 474-2982

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No justification for so big a raise in Rotterdam

Republican [Rotterdam] Town Board members John Mertz and Joseph Signore, for the second time, voted to give themselves a 50 percent raise for their part-time town board positions [Jan. 10 Gazette].
An obvious question is posed: When Mr. Mertz and Mr. Signore campaigned in 2005, was such a raise part of their platform? Absolutely not. One can only wonder what other surprises Mertz and Signore have in store for town residents. When was the last time any resident received a 50 percent raise?
Thankfully, Supervisor Steve Tommasone and Town Board Member John Silva voted against this extravagant increase.
ANTHONY J. CERVERA
Rotterdam
The writer is the Rotterdam Democratic chairman.

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Marco, who served on the board for eight years, voted in favor of the raise.

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Board member Diane Marco voted in favor of the amendment, acknowledging that the raises wouldn’t go into effect until after she leaves office Dec. 31. She said the increase is necessary to help attract a broader pool of candidates for the board,
   “We have not had an increase since 1991,” she said.

Quoted Text

No justification for so big a raise in Rotterdam

Republican [Rotterdam] Town Board members John Mertz and Joseph Signore, for the second time, voted to give themselves a 50 percent raise for their part-time town board positions [Jan. 10 Gazette].
An obvious question is posed: When Mr. Mertz and Mr. Signore campaigned in 2005, was such a raise part of their platform? Absolutely not. One can only wonder what other surprises Mertz and Signore have in store for town residents. When was the last time any resident received a 50 percent raise?
Thankfully, Supervisor Steve Tommasone and Town Board Member John Silva voted against this extravagant increase.
ANTHONY J. CERVERA
Rotterdam
The writer is the Rotterdam Democratic chairman.

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Democrat politicized town board raise issue

    Re Feb. 9 letter, “No justification for so big a raise in Rotterdam”: Rotterdam Democratic Chairman Anthony Cervera overlooked the fact that former board member Diane Marco, a prominent member of the Democratic Party, also expressed her support of a raise for the town board while still a board member. In Mr. Cervera’s letter, misstated the fact that board members John Mertz and Joseph Signore were the only ones who supported the proposed increase.
    The Nov. 21 Rotterdam Spotlight, a local newspaper, quoted Marco, “I am voting for the pay increase because there has been none since 1991.” Marco said that although she wasn’t running for re-election, she still believed the increase was merited. The Nov. 15 Gazette quoted her as saying the increase was necessary “to help attract a broader pool of candidates for the board.”
    Schenectady Mayor Brian Stratton, who recently increased his salary by $36,204, or 60 percent, demonstrates that Mr. Cervera’s views aren’t consistent with his fellow Democrats in Schenectady County.
    The issue of a raise for town board members should not become a partisan political issue, as Mr. Cervera is attempting to do. The decision should be based on fiscal and legal viability, and ultimately what is best for the residents of Rotterdam.
    JO-ANN SCHROM
    Rotterdam