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SCHENECTADY
Council head lists host of changes
Ousting school board pushed
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

    To improve the city, new City Council President Gary McCarthy wants to oust the Schenectady school board and create a new tax system that forces most landlords to pay more than homeowners.
    And when that’s done, he has a whole host of equally wide-reaching plans for the rest of the year.
    McCarthy wasted no time after being sworn in as the council’s new leader Monday. With what appears to be the full backing of the council — all of whom are Democrats, like him — he promised to take swift action to change the most frustrating issues in the city.
    He wants slumlords to sell their property or become responsible landlords. He wants to give young professionals a reason to quit renting and buy a house in Schenectady. And he thinks a shift in the tax burden, coupled with a complete leadership change at the school district, will bring fresh air to the city’s dying neighborhoods.
    As if that’s not enough, he also plans to force the entire council to sit through monthly reviews of 200 decaying houses. He’s hoping the constant attention on the city’s worst homes, combined with the possibility of higher taxes on those properties, will lead to better neighborhoods.
    And if it doesn’t, McCarthy said grimly, the council meetings will just stay long.
    “They’d be long anyway as we deal with them piecemeal,” he said, adding that he knows there’s many more than 200 houses, mostly rentals, that need major repairs.
    “But I had to be realistic,” he said. “If I said 500 a month, we’d have to turn this room into sleep- ing quarters.”
    Of his many promises, the shift in tax burden might draw the greatest interest. It drew the most applause Monday night. But he referred to it only briefly. He focused on changing the school board.
    “Today I do not view the school district as a full partner in our redevelopment,” he said. “We must deal with the reality that homebuyers view city and county services as a secondary consideration. Their first consideration is the school district.”
    The district’s low graduation rate and the loss of what McCarthy termed “academic excellence” has deterred parents from buying in the city, he said.
    He went so far as to call it the single greatest deterrence — larger than crime, deteriorating housing stock or high taxes......................>>>>................>>>>...............http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00903&AppName=1

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SCHENECTADY
Council leader pushes dual tax-rate plan
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter
Reach Gazette reporter Kathleen Moore at 395-3120 or moore@dailygazette.com.

    The city will need state approval to create a new tax system that would charge landlords more than owner-occupants.
    Council President Gary McCarthy pushed for speed Tuesday, challenging city workers to put together a state home-rule legislation request in just two weeks.
    In that time, he wants to present hard data to prove his supposition that rental buildings cost the city more than single-family homes. Owners living in a two-unit home would not be charged the higher rate.
    The city is compiling a list of the addresses with the highest number of police and fire calls in the last six months, which will be crossreferenced with city tax data to show which buildings are rental properties.
    A list of code violations will also be organized by property type, which city officials believe will show that rental properties generally have far more violations, and of a more severe nature.
    “Our costs are driven by absentee landlords,” McCarthy said.
    But if their taxes go up, they may pass the costs on to their tenants, Mayor Brian U. Stratton said.
    He reminded McCarthy that a tenant begged him last week to leave the taxes equal so that her rent remained affordable.
    McCarthy said he’d rather use the tax shift to force bad landlords out of the city. ..............>>>>.................>>>>.....................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01001&AppName=1

McCarthy is an idiot if he believes that the new tax he proposes won't just be passed on to the tenants IMHO, I guess that Gary never heard of the phrase cut spending and operate within your budget.

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SCHENECTADY
Taxing plan is unfair, some say
Landlords face higher charges
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

    City Council President Gary Mc-Carthy’s proposed new tax system will chase away many landlords, both the good and the bad, one property owner says.
    Other landlords said the idea of making them pay more of the city’s tax burden, while owner-occupants pay less, is inherently unfair.
    And if they’re right, McCarthy’s idea will have to be abandoned, Corporation Counsel L. John Van Norden said.
    “This is an incredibly complicated thing he wants to do,” Van Norden said. “There’s all these constitutional issues with equal protection.”
    In essence, he said, the city must prove that there is a significant cost difference between services provided to singlefamily homes and services provided to rental properties.
    “It’s all going to hinge on what the data shows,” Van Norden said.
    The police have asked their software provider to generate a report listing the addresses with the most fire and police calls between April and November of last year. That was the peak call time, Public Safety Commissioner Wayne Bennett said.
    The addresses will be cross-referenced with the city’s tax department to determine which ones are rentals and which are owner-occupied.
    If the data doesn’t show that police and fire officials go to rental properties far more often than owner-occupied homes, a separate tax system would violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution, Van Norden said. ..............>>>>.................>>>>................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01101&AppName=1

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SCHENECTADY
Landlords blast council’s tax plan
Rental unit owners decry added financial burden
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

    Four landlords fired back at Council President Gary McCarthy Monday, arguing that his tax proposal will leave the city’s rentals in worse shape than they are today.
    But McCarthy did not back down from his proposal to shift the tax burden so that homeowners pay a smaller share of the city’s taxes and landlords pay more.
    He told them he welcomed the debate and assured them that their comments would lead to better legislation.
    The landlords weren’t pleased. They wanted him to drop the idea entirely.
    Afterward, they said they doubted McCarthy and the rest of the council understand the landlord business.
    New landlords, who are still paying mortgages on the rental property and may only own a few units, have such a slim profit margin that they can’t turn away “bad” tenants, they said.
    McCarthy wants such landlords to sell their property and leave. City officials have repeatedly said no landlord should rent to drug dealers or allow them to stay once their activities are known. McCarthy also says landlords who can’t afford to maintain their buildings should stop trying to make a living on rental property.
    “We have a core group of individuals who should not be in the business,” McCarthy said Monday. “They’re property owners that create a negative influence on the neighborhood.” ...................>>>>.................>>>>...............http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00902&AppName=1

they will just pass the cost on to the renters that are making $15.00/hour at the subsidized GE battery jobs......

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Don’t go after all the landlords bad ones

    Re Jan. 26 article, “Landlords blast council apartment tax hike idea”: Here we go again. Let’s go after the landlords with some unrealistic way of trying to put them out of business.
    It's no secret by now that the city has and still is at war with landlords. I have been a landlord for 20-plus years. I have done well on my own (without the city’s help), setting my standards and meeting some terrific people over the years. I must agree that the quality of life in the city would be better if all properties were owner-occupied. I know the city wishes it could be so, like I wish I could make $1 million a year! Let's be realistic.
    What about code enforcement? Is it really effective? Is it getting property owners to improve their properties? Is it making properties safer and saving lives? What is it costing the city?
    You can’t make people do what they are not going to do! What I have been saying for years is, why not work with landlords and not threaten them with regulations, fees, etc.?
    I agree there are some really bad property owners. The city knows who they are. Let’s stop wasting time getting nowhere. Get creative, and make this city a more desirable place to live. Everyone deserves it.

    ROBERT BURGESS
    Schenectady

http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00906&AppName=1

How about just enforcing the laws already in place.  That would be a good start.

Quoted from 584

How about just enforcing the laws already in place.  That would be a good start.

Come on Giantsfan, you are making too much sense here!!!  

This is what happens to a city that welcomes the slum lords, gives the drug addicts and prostitutes the best government handouts in the state all for votes!! While the hard working people who do reside in the city are being taxed to death. AND all of the good, law abiding landlords have to pay for the scum!

All because the code enforcer is clearly not doing their tax paid job!!

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SCHENECTADY
Lawyer says tax plan is legal
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

    It is legal to tax landlords more than owner-occupants, Corp. Counsel L. John Van Norden told the Schenectady City Council on Monday.
    “We’re confident that would withstand a constitutional challenge,” Van Norden said.
    He suggested the city create three taxing groups: homesteads, which must be owner-occupied but could include two-unit buildings; commercial property; and “mixed use,” which would apply to all non-owner-occupied residential buildings.
    Now the council must formally ask the state Legislature for home rule legislation allowing the change. That will be difficult, Council President Gary McCarthy said.
    “Sending anything to Albany right now and accepting a favorable outcome is an interesting proposition,” he said.
    Still, the council is going to try. ................>>>>.............>>>>.................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00904&AppName=1

This idea doesn't pass the smell test and IMHO if challenged will be found unconstitutional as it isn't applied equally or fairly.

I honestly don't know how the people in schenectady can continue to live there. This administration is by far the most obvious bunch of clowns, that I'm beginning to question the residents who continually vote them in.

These clowns are penalizing the good, responsible landlords as if they were the slumlords. They should all group together, get an attorney and sue the city!

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SCHENECTADY
Tax plans’ odds slim
Legislators say ideas unlikely to get state support
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

    The state Legislature most likely will not let Schenectady shift some taxes from homeowners to landlords, state Sen. Hugh Farley and Assemblyman James Tedisco said Tuesday.
    And the Legislature might not let the city pass off some of its tax collection responsibilities, either, Farley said.
    Mayor Brian U. Stratton said Monday that he hoped to save the city $4 million by getting state permission to stop paying delinquent taxes to the county and school district when property owners don’t pay.
    Farley said that if state legislators view the tax collection change as the equivalent of a tax hike at the county and school level, it won’t be approved.
    As for the homeownerlandlord tax shift, he said that would be the same as raising taxes. He called it “the tax increase on landlords” and predicted that such an idea would never pass.
    “Both of these are quite controversial. The chances, at least in the Senate, are very slim,” Farley said. “The mood in the Legislature, in my house anyway, is they don’t want to raise taxes on anybody.”
    Tedisco said passage in the Assembly is equally unlikely.
    “This is a year when we’re not really supporting a lot of tax increases,” he said.
    Both men said they were opposed particularly because the change would likely lead to higher rents.
    “It could be passed on to the poor, the tenants,” Farley said.
    Tedisco added that it would certainly be passed on to those least able to afford it. ....................>>>>.................>>>>.............http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00903&AppName=1

The best way to stop an out of control government on the local/state/federal levels is to cut off their money supply. If only everyone across this whole country stopped paying taxes until the government balanced it's budget and cut wasteful programs we could eliminate the defecit.

Quoted from Shadow

The best way to stop an out of control government on the local/state/federal levels is to cut off their money supply. If only everyone across this whole country stopped paying taxes until the government balanced it's budget and cut wasteful programs we could eliminate the defecit.

CHA-CHING.....