Politics & Government

Mineola Village Board Passes Tax Cap Override

Law allows village to go above 2 percent cap if necessary.

It’s not often where a village can override the state, but in the case of local municipalities being able to go above the tax cap imposed by New York, it’s a common occurrence.

According to municipal attorney John Spellman, all the villages he represents have passed an law allowing for the override of the cap and “virtually” all villages in Nassau will pass it as well, including the Village of Mineola which adopted the measure unanimously at its December 14 meeting of the .

“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.”

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

Costs related to health care and pensions contributions imposed by the state were said to require a tax increase of 3.65 percent alone for the village.

“Those are out of our hands,” the mayor said.

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

Since the pension fund is guaranteed and fully-funded, the state is raising contribution rates to make up for losses in investments due to the poor economy.

“They’re going to make us do the catchup all at once when the bottom dropped out of their investments,” Spellman said.

Mineola’s pension fund costs were said to be rising 10 percent next year and health care premiums were also set to rise by 10 percent. This year the village’s labor contract expires as well and negotiations will begin shortly for a new contract.

“It doesn’t make sense to handcuff ourselves and put ourselves in a position of jeopardizing our compliance with the law when we don’t have all the numbers yet,” Spellman said. “This is a tool; it is not a requirement for use.”

, the local property tax cap prevented taxes from rising more than 2 percent of total amount of taxes raised in prior year or the rate of inflation, whichever is less. The state comptroller has not issued the alternate number for the inflation rate.

“We can’t be sure that we can be in compliance with that law,” Spellman said. “Why? The law sets the limit before we make our budget so we’re already locked into a number before we do our calculations.”

The state tax cap law can be overridden by a local law, but requires a 60 percent majority of the board, in Mineola’s case of five trustees, a minimum of three votes, the same to adopt a budget.

“If we decided to impose this law and go along with it, we can’t raise taxes more than 2 percent, I’d have to make up that 1.65 somewhere else and that’s our services,” Strauss said. “It’s whether we close the pool early, reduce the amount of times we clean the streets from once a week to once a month, close the summer rec program or shorten the hours, whatever it is there’s a service that that extra percentage points have to come from somewhere.”

If the village were to go above the 2 percent cap without enacting the law, it would be subject to “some hefty fines” Strauss said. “And how do we pay those hefty fines? It’s a bad situation that we could face.”

The override must to be enacted every year by a village board and is only effective for that single budget year. However, the village does not get to decide if it is under the cap, as all final figures must be sent to the state for tabulation.

“We’ve got a situation right now where if we don’t enact this law and if we accidentally pierce the cap, we’re setting ourselves up for punitive damages, financial damages that, quite frankly, would cause the taxes to go up even more,” Trustee Lawrence Werther said, calling the tax cap as having been passed “without any .”

“We’re going to work very hard to certainly stay within it,” deputy mayor Paul Pereira said of the cap. “Certainly the residents can voice their opinions what is more important: the services we provide or staying within the tax cap. Obviously we would like to accomplish both of those things.”


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here