ALBANY – Senator James Skoufis (D, Cornwall) has secured a provision in the 2021-2022 state budget requiring the state to permanently pay property taxes on Goosepond Mountain State Park in the towns of Chester and Blooming Grove.
Currently, the state pays taxes on every park under the jurisdiction of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission – except Goosepond Mountain State Park.
When Skoufis was an assemblyman in 2017, he learned of the situation and introduced legislation to change that.
Revising the park’s real property tax status results in approximately $100,000 in new annual revenue for the impacted communities.
Skoufis said Chester and Blooming Grove have been “shortchanged by the state and local taxpayers have been forced to wrongly make up the difference in order to properly fund our local governments. That unfairness ends now.”
