ECS eyeing another lopsided tax levy

By DAVID HULSE

ELDRED — With state assessment equalization numbers foreshadowing another shift in school district taxes this fall, Eldred Central School officials last week made another effort to equalize the tax load in its two major component towns.

School officials said they were trying to avert a likely 20 percent or more shift of school tax levies into the Town of Highland.

As it did last year, the Board of Education last Thursday approved a certified taxing district composed of the towns of Highland and Lumberland. The certification affirms the district’s belief that the two towns’ assessment rolls are fairly drawn to the state’s required 100 percent valuation standard. Acceptance by state officials would mean that properties in the two, roughly like-sized towns would have the same tax rate for upcoming 2001-02 school year taxes.

The problem is that state officials, who denied the certification last year, have made indications that they are likely to again uphold the criteria in setting values for large hydroelectric properties, which defeated that certification.

That problem arose when the Southern Corporation, in a larger purchase of Orange and Rockland and Consolidated Edison power-producing facilities, acquired Mongaup River hydroelectric properties in Lumberland for about 20 percent of the existing $70 million assessed value.

Even though state officials had then recently audited and approved newly re-valued Lumberland hydroelectric assessments, the state summarily challenged those assessments, which comprise about 20 percent of the town’s tax base.

While certification was denied, Superintendent Candace Mazur said ECS complained and was able to get equalization rates back to rough parity. Highland school taxpayers were hit with a tax increase last year, but Mazur said that resulted from increased values in a newly updated tax roll.

The shifts traditionally come from state equalization rates, formulas used to justify values to meet the 100 percent of full value standard, from the varying assessment regimes among municipalities in a larger district.

This year, the state has issued a tentative 1.00 equalization rate for Highland and 1.24 rate for Lumberland. The 1.24 rate documents the state’s contention that the town is over assessed by 24 percent. “Both are [really] at 100 percent,” board member Andrew Boyar claimed, “but the state’s changing Lumberland to 1.24 actually is a 24 percent shift.”

Boyar said there is no grounds for the state’s action as the property owner, Southern, has not challenged the assessment. He charged the state action was interference with local government home rule principles.

But, aside from lobbying for change and costly legal action, there is little the school district can do about the state’s decision, Mazur said.

Worse yet, unless Southern challenges the assessments and brings the issue to a head, it’s likely that the shift will become a regular fixture until the state changes its mind or Lumberland reduces its assessments to the state’s levels. Town action is not likely either, as town officials are concerned about the resulting steep increases that such a reduction would cause in town property taxes.

Board president Norman Sutherland wondered why the state could not go the other way in its rate formulas to force Lumberland into line by shifting their way. “Their fight is with Lumberland,” the Highland resident said. “I might as well put a target on my head,” Sutherland added.

Mazur said figures on the new budget won’t be available until March and that the new budget was bare bones on new spending, prepared with the problem in mind. “There’s really not much of anything new in it,” she said.