Manza: “… people are losing their homes …”
MONTICELLO – Last Month, Sullivan County legislators approved $95 million in bonding to pay for a long overdue new jail. On Thursday, they gave themselves permission to make sure they have the money to pay for it.
The legislature adopted a local law permitted under the 2011 Real Property Tax Cap legislation allowing an override by a super-majority vote of a county legislature.
The vote followed a public hearing on Thursday. Most of several who spoke were opposed.
Tom Manza, who said he has been following the current jail discussion and debate for eight years, noted he has seen the estimated cost go from about $57 million, to the current estimate of $95 million. He said he has also seen some more disturbing trends symptomatic of property owners’ current ability to pay more than they are paying now.
“When I first started following the tax auctions about seven or eight years ago, they were mostly empty properties and there weren’t that many residences that were occupied,” Manza said. “The past couple of years, there’ve been a tremendous amount of homes, particularly in the villages, of people losing their homes.”
Manza said instead of hearing a diligent search for affordable options, including using existing facilities for some programs, and what many other speakers alluded to – building a smaller jail – he saw most of that part of the discussion “thrown out the window.”
Manza, along with a few others, cautioned against placing too much hope in future windfalls from the casino.
“Okay, the casino may help, but you don’t know that. When you have a business, you spend money you’ve got, not money you don’t have.”
Legislature Chairman Luis Alvarez agreed in part, with that assessment.
“You don’t have that,” Alvarez said. “You can’t count on what you don’t have. And if we knew we had that, then you don’t go over this cap. You don’t know it; you don’t know until you get into it.”
Alvarez said the resolution giving permission to exceed the cap is a safety net. He holds some hope, but not much, that they may be able to stay under the cap when the 2017 budget is prepared in the fall.
County Manager Joshua Potosek is not that optimistic.
“Unless a pot of money falls out of the sky, potentially, but no, I mean that decision will be made in the context, in December, with the 2017 budget with the legislature,” Potosek said. “This allows them to do that but obviously, if something changes between now and December, we could have that conversation, if possible, to stay within the cap.”
The resolution on the tax cap was adopted unanimously by the legislature without further debate or discussion.
