Lumberland taxes go up 12.1 percent

Assessor says she’s being forced out

By DAVID HULSE

GLEN SPEY, NY — Lumberland’s 2005 budget will provide a 20-percent increase in spending and a 12.1 percent plan, but as it was approved on November 10, much of the discussion at town board meeting involved new mandated hours for the assessor’s office.

The town board approved a budget calling for $2.08 million in appropriations, which includes $348,000 in new spending.

Supervisor John LiGreci said the budget increase stems largely from the settlement, earlier this year, of the Mirant Mongaup hydroelectric facilities tax claim case that reduced Lumberland’s tax base by some $7 million and obligated the town to repay several years of tax bill overcharges in excess of $500,000. The repayments will not impact the town’s budget until 2006, but the budget charges against the lost tax base had to be redistributed in 2005, LiGreci said.

Along with the rest of the town’s properties, Sole Assessor Minke Kwak determined and defended the town’s valuation of the Mirant properties throughout the tax claim case.

Wednesday’s budget approval came within a resolution that Kwak, who was originally hired on a part-time basis and also serves as an assessor in the Ulster County Town of Gardiner, expand her work schedule in Lumberland from two days to four days per week. The resolution also mandated hours for three other offices, supervisors confidential assistant, code enforcement and court clerk.

LiGreci said the decision was based on a comparison of assessors’ salaries and schedules from several neighboring towns. They found Kwak’s resulting $27.56-per-hour pay rate “was excessive,” compared to an average rate of about $21, he said. In doubling scheduled days, the board also adjusted Kwak’s salary to meet the average rate.

Kwak responded in a letter calling the decision “a mandate without funding.” She noted that “someone else,” whose hours had been doubled, LiGreci’s confidential assistant, had also received a doubled salary. She said the action “looks like a way of forcing me to resign without asking me to do so.”

In general, LiGreci said pay raises were given to “deserving” employees and waste was cut. Overall, appropriations funding the town’s 42 salaried positions rose nine percent, to $273,272.

LiGreci said the impact of the lost tax base could have resulted in a tax hike as high as 27 percent without changes in the budget. “We have reviewed this budget more than any other in my five years on the board,” he said.

The tax rate per thousand dollars of assessed value will rise $.76 to $6.91 with the new budget.

Significant new spending in 2005 includes:

• $62,333 for bond principal on the town’s new salt shed;

• $53,000 for contributions to the state retirement fund;

• $26,200 for medical/hospitalization insurance;

• $57,700 for general highway repairs;

• $46,700 for machinery including a truck leasing program; and

• $28,667 to repay the principal on a bond anticipation note for the Hollow Road construction project.