At Tuesday night’s Chemung County full Legislature meeting, the Chemung County Legislature passed a resolution extending a sales tax agreement between Chemung County and the City of Elmira. Legislators Rodney J. Strange and Peggy Woodard voted ‘NO’ in opposition to the proposal.
Under the agreement, City payments to the County will be deferred for shared services in 2018 and 2019 equaling $1,049,073 and $249,073 in 2020 for total deferrals of $1,298,146. The proposed schedule includes a $250,000 payment from the City to the County for both 2019 and 2020.
“We believe the deferral of approximately $1,300,000 million will allow the City to hold the line on taxes during this two-year period and afford the joint City-County committee ample time to consider other actions necessary to address the city’s financial situation,” says Chemung County Executive Tom Santulli.
“I would urge City Council to approve this plan and immediately move to participate in the proposed joint committee to start the important work of identifying a long term plan to address the City’s fiscal problems,” said Chemung County Deputy Executive Mike Krusen.
This agreement also gives the Towns and Villages additional sales tax distributions of approximately $500,000 for both 2019 and 2020.
15th District Legislator Rodney J. Strange says now is not the time to make decisions on this critically important issue.
“We are less than four weeks away from an election. We should have waited until the new county executive and legislature took office to make any decision regarding a new sales tax agreement. I discussed this with the municipalities in my district and they supported my opposition to this. There was no need to rush this proposal through. We could have extended the current agreement and took a fresh look at it in January. We need to increase the amount of sales tax we give to our municipalities and I strongly support that. Pushing this agreement through was not the way we should be doing business,” Strange said.
The Elmira City council must approve this agreement by October 16, 2018. This deadline is necessary so Chemung County can complete its 2019 budget, which will be released on November 8.
If the City fails to pass the sales tax agreement extension, State law provides that the sales tax revenues that the county determines are available for distribution must be shared by the City, towns and villages based on population. This requirement and subsequent calculations would result in an approximate $170,000 in loss sales tax revenues to the City.
The current agreement doesn’t have to be replaced until Nov. 30, and with a three-way county executive race and multiple county legislative races that will be decided next month, it makes more sense to wait until after Election Day, said Mayor Dan Mandell.
“Right now, my position is we’ll revisit it and take the politics out of it after the election Nov. 6. We’ll have time to vote by Nov. 30,” Mandell said.
“Were not declining the current agreement nor are we accepting it,” he said. “The county executive wanted an answer by the 16th of October. That’s short notice. I want to talk to the council membership. We are aware of the $170,000 (revenue loss), but we want to take politics out of it.”