Politics & Government

Village To Discuss Possible Tax Cap Piercing

Public hearing and possible vote to take place Monday night.

The Patchogue Village Board of trustees are expected to discuss and possibly vote on whether or not the Village will  at Monday's .

The New York state-imposed two-percent tax cap has afflicted school districts and villages across Long Island, leading to .

Several villages in New York have voted to pierce the cap, including .

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Pontieri said that the New York State Conference of Mayors and Municipal Officials has advised Villages to pierce the cap in a letter signed by the Conference's executive director Peter A. Baynes, which Pontieri sent to Patch and is attached in the PDF section.

The letter states that Villages may want to vote to pierce the cap, not necessarily to raise taxes, but to avoid the possibility of unintentionally exceeding the cap.

Find out what's happening in Patchoguewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

"Without the local law in place this could result in the municipality at some later date having to set aside money in a reserve fund the amount of which would depend on how long it takes for the inadvertent mistake to be discovered," Baynes states in the letter. "Passing the local law should protect the municipality if such a mistake occurs."

In an interview with , Pontieri concurs with this assessment in order to keep the Village safe in terms of accounting.

“If we make an error, that error carries into the next year,” Pontieri said.

Some residents have posted negative reactions to the possibility of piercing the tax cap on Patch.

"The Mayor and the trustees should be doing all they can to limit the tax burden for residents rather then making it heavier," wrote .

"I would hope that before the Board would even entertain this idea that they do everything they can to cut wasteful spending and recover monies owed to the Village," wrote , who ran and lost against Pontieri in .

When the Village of Mineola voted to raise the tax cap in January, Mineola Village Mayor told Patch a similar opinion to what is raised by Pontieri and the Conference.

“We’re not looking to raise the tax limit and... come into a huge tax increase next year or in future years,”  said. “The idea of this tax law is to allow us some flexibility should we need to go over it and when I say ‘need to go over it,’ there’s a couple of things that we can’t control.”

Strauss referred to health care and pension costs as uncontrollable, which for Patchogue Pontieri says that the Village faces a 15 percent increase in medical expenses that make the cap a challenge to work with among other rising costs.

The Village Board of Trustees meeting will take place in , 14 Baker St., at 7:30 p.m.

Editorial Note: Patch is only quoting from commenters that are not using anonymous accounts. This entails that the commenter at least uses their real name and photo in their Patch profile.

Geoffrey Walter contributed to this story.


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