ECS ‘let down’
by the state

By DAVID HULSE

ELDRED — “We’ve come full circle,” a frustrated Candace Mazur reported of failed district efforts to get state officials to consider tax relief for school district property owners.

The Eldred Central School (ECS) superintendent was describing a NYS Office of Real Property Tax Services (ORPS) response to her last letter seeking approval of a “certified” taxing district for Lumberland and Highland that would eliminate large annual shifts in the district’s tax levy. Mazur said ORPS, which was delegated to respond to her letter to Governor Pataki, said it was “powerless to help” and recommended the district contact their legislators.

Mazur told the Board of Education on September 13 that this was the same ORPS response that ECS received the first time the district inquired more than two years ago. ECS has since worked extensively with both Assemblyman Jake Gunther and Senator John Bonacic, who recently threw up their hands and passed the issue on to the governor.

An ongoing assessment dispute over former Orange and Rockland Utilities hydroelectric power facilities has short circuited an ECS effort to gain a certified district for the past two years. ORPS, even before the property owner appealed, overruled local assessments of the properties after O&R sold the facilities to the Southern Energy.

Board member Andrew Boyar said that was where the state acted improperly. Boyar said ORPS created the problem and now describe themselves as powerless to fix it. “This is a tremendous demonstration of ineptitude on behalf of state government…Gunther, Bonacic, ORPS and the Governor all let us down,” he said.

Mazur said ECS would file for the certified district again and “have them tell us no again,” she added.

McDonald to speak at MacKenzie

In other business at the ECS meeting, MacKenzie Elementary School principal Kathy Ryan announced that quadriplegic, New York City police officer Steven McDonald, who was among the victims of mass shooting incident aboard a commuter train several years ago, will speak to MacKenzie students about non-violent conflict resolution during a 2:00 p.m., September 20 appearance.