By David Jones, supervisor

Town of Fenner

As supervisor of the Town of Fenner, I would like to clear up some of the questions and concerns about the raise in the tax rate for our town for 2018. We, as the town officials for the Town of Fenner, put a great deal of time and thought into the 2018 budget and what impact it would have on the town taxpayers.

As a side note on the budget, the 26 percent increase that was in the Cazenovia Republican last week, is not on the whole tax bill, it is only on the town portion of the taxes – which was $3 for 2017. This was 26 percent of $3. It is still a preliminary budget and at this time the rate for 2018 is $3.71 per thousand, which is 23.5 percent of $3.

That being said, we are down over $200,000 in revenue over the past two years, which is approximately 20 percent of our budget. This is due mainly to putting the windmills on the tax rolls, as the 15-year pilot program ended.

Some history: New York state told us at the beginning of the windmill project that the fair, taxable value of the windmills should be 34 million dollars. The windmill company agreed to this amount at the beginning of the pilot program and paid fire and ambulance tax on this amount during the 15 years of pilot payments.

At the end of the pilot program and after much research, we realized there should be some depreciation and a 26.5 percent depreciation figure was decided on by town officials. This put the assessment at 25 million dollars on the tax rolls.

At this time, the windmill company is grieving this amount. So our thoughts at the town are, if the state set this amount, they should be behind us in helping with the current assessment but we have not received any response at this time. We will be reaching out to Senator Valesky and Assemblyman Magee for some help and guidance in the near future.

Another item affecting our budget is that in the same timeframe, the employee benefits went up approximately $21,000.

As for the concern about the recent purchase of a new plow truck for the town, it is replacing a truck that is 20 years old and has had thousands of dollars in repairs in the last year. It was down for repairs at critical times during last winter’s storms, which left us with just two trucks to plow almost 50 miles of town roads.

This decision was not made lightly. It was made for the safety of the town residents and trying to keep the roads open in the winter and do repairs to the town roads at other times of the year.

The Town of Fenner has one of the lowest tax rates in the county, even with the increase that we agonized over, which was necessary if we are to continue the services that our town residents have come to expect and need. A comparison of other town’s tax rates will be on our town website in the near future.

I am always available to take telephone calls at the town office, my home or cell phone. Those telephone numbers are available at the town clerk’s office at 315-655-2705.