POUGHKEEPSIE – The chairman of the Poughkeepsie Common Council said the city is in its current fiscal crisis because Dutchess County Executive Marcus Molinaro and the Republican-led county legislature “have cut the legs out from under the city for years and this fiscal crisis and budget is the consequence of their policies.”
Petsas’ comments on Saturday came after Mayor Robert Rolison announced his proposed 2017 city budget that includes a 16.5 percent property tax increase. Petsas acknowledged the new mayor “inherited a fiscal mess,” but the chairman said Rolison “needs to get Dutchess County Government to restore Poughkeepsie’s sales tax revenue.”
“There are only hard decisions and we should make them together,” Molinaro said.
Petsas said since the sales tax formula change in 2013, Poughkeepsie taxpayers have lost close to $6.8 million through the end of 2015 and that number will grow even larger by the end of this year. “Under the county’s distribution formula, the City of Poughkeepsie’s sales tax revenue is down 17 percent since 2012, while the county’s portion is up 11 percent.”
Petsas said since 2012, gross sales tax receipts have gone up six percent, while the county kept an extra $17 million that would have been distributed and shared among all of the municipalities. That, he said, resulted in local distribution being down 12 percent.
“Until Molinaro changes the sales tax agreement with municipalities, any property tax increase for Poughkeepsie in 2017, is the ‘Molinaro property tax increase,” Petsas said.
“It’s a shame to see the blame game being played in Poughkeepsie instead of focusing on solutions and revitalization of the city,” said County Legislator Angela Flesland, chairwoman of the Budget and Finance Committee. “The sales tax agreement gives the City of Poughkeepsie far more in tax revenue than is actually collected in the City of Poughkeepsie.”
Flesland said the residents of the county “will not shoulder the burden of years of bad budgeting in the City of Poughkeepsie.” She said if the common council believes the sales tax agreement is not beneficial to city residents, “they can certainly vote to collect their own sales tax and no longer participate in the county agreement.”
Tonight’s common council agenda includes a resolution calling on Rolison and Molinaro to renegotiate the current sales tax formula to “provide greater aid to the city and all municipalities.”
