From left, Reiber, Samuelson, Sturm
MONTICELLO – The mood was clearly upbeat during a 15-minute meeting of Sullivan County’s Council of Governments Tuesday afternoon. The brief session amounted to a testimonial in enthusiastic support of a memorandum of understanding that towns and villages will share 40 percent of revenues above a baseline of $40.5 million.
A “historic day for Sullivan County and the towns and villages in it,” is how Bethel Supervisor Daniel Sturm saw it, saying Sullivan’s business community in particular comes out a winner.
“And this is a way for the town people to feel a direct benefit to the businesses that are already here,” Sturm said. “In other words, the sales tax now that the county gets, and you get a county benefit, but I can go back to my town, Town of Bethel, and say ‘listen, every business that comes here and pays sales tax, a portion of it is going to come back to us’.”
Thompson, which will host the Catskills’ only casino, can expect to see a significant increase in sales tax revenue, from ancillary business likely to emerge. Supervisor Bill Rieber is willing to share to gain.
“Fully expect that the sales tax revenue and the other revenue sources in the county are going to increase based on new developments that are coming into the Thompson area,” Rieber noted. “And, it’s going to spread through the county and this is a good way to apportion it fairly.”
Perhaps most upbeat was County Legislature Chairman Scott Samuelson.
“The group was excellent,” Samuelson proclaimed. “The issues that came forward were right on target, and then we compromised on many, many levels. I’m very, very pleased with the way it turned out. I thought it was a great cooperation.”
Samuelson noted in introducing the meeting, attended by about 75 people, that more revenue to the county and more sharing of it adds up to paying attention to matters “… that we have let go over the course of time,” a reference to a deteriorating infrastructure that may finally get some attention in the form of dollars and cents.
