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Follow Up on the
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Reval
Impacts Lessen
“Less than 15 percent of the people have asked for
any hearings,” said acting town assessor Bob Breglio.
Supervisor Bert Leifeld, who insisted on being on hand for
any meetings regarding the long-awaited reval, added that
the results, following a bit of adjustment after the mailing
of impact statements, seemed to fit the general breakdown
for all municipal revaluations: one third of all properties
went up, one third went down and one third staid the same.
The shift that occurred following the release of mandatory
Impact Statements, Leifeld and Breglio explained, resulted
from the town’s having heard from the engineering
firm its tax attorney, Patrick Sealey of Murphy, Hackett,
had hired to come up with a new value for the massive New
York City-owned Ashokan Reservoir that bisects Olive and
takes up over 50 percent of its landmass. Whereas the value
reflected on the impact statements was a little over $500
million for the reservoir, new figures being used by the
town in hearings and discussions with taxpayers are using
a $650 million value for the reservoir.
Two years ago, following years being valued in the $120
million range, the state Office of Real Property Services
placed a $340 million value on the Ashokan, a figure the
city has been appealing and which Leifeld called “practically
random.”
Olive has been in court with New York City for years over
disagreements over tax assessments and valuation of the
reservoir. A recent decision in Olive’s favor is currently
awaiting a second decision by state Supreme Court justice
Vincent Bradley, who is not expected to reach a decision
for at least a year, according to town officials.
Asked about specifics of the reval – as in what went
up and down, what stayed the same, how various neighborhoods
are vying against each other – Breglio and Leifeld
tended to be vague, saying that they had yet to receive
a final report, with such facts in it, from Cole, Layer
and Trumble the consultant firm that ran the reval under
the steady hand of local hire Steve Beccio of New Paltz.
The current figures, they said, would be published as town
tax rolls on May 1, for payments in September and January.
Those wishing to formally grieve their tax assessments can
do so on May 24.
Leifeld said he expected the City to grieve its assessment,
and valuation, “as it has in recent years.”
But he added that he felt the town was in good standing
vis a vis its case, given that the Ashokan Reservoir now
takes up less of a percentage of the total tax rolls than
it once did, following the reval, and New York’s subsequent
tax payments will be going down from the current year’s.
“Property tended to go down. Residences went up,”
Breglio said of his findings after the reval. “What
differences there were between neighborhoods was insubstantial,
of $5,00 or such. More important was whether a property
was on Route 28 or not, with privacy a big factor. Older
homes did better than modulars.”
All the assessors noted how Olive’s real estate market
has been booming, with over 170 house sales in the last
two years, at an average rate of increase of 13 percent
2003 to 2004, 14 percent from 2004 top 2005, and 9 percent
so far this year. They said that with a “full pie”
value of $1.4 billion allotted the town, that’s meant
a hike for homes.
“It was a big value shift in homes,” Breglio
said, pointing to charts that showed Olive as one of Ulster
County’s hottest real estate markets, just trailing
neighboring Woodstock and Marbletown.
So was the shift of city values a means of softening blows
for everyone else?
Leifeld shrugged. He agreed that there would be legal wranglings
over the coming years. But at least the bad impacts had
softened. And nearly $1.3 million of its tax battles to
the city had been covered, to date, by funding from the
Catskill Watershed Corporation, which still had some left
for such purposes. Just as the town had a sizeable-enough
Capital Reserve to help should help be needed… just
as it helped cover the costs of the current reval.
Everyone kept pointing out how the big thing for people
to remember was that the new values allotted their homes
reflected what they could sell them for. And furthermore,
they urged everyone in town to come in and talk about their
new assessments before May rolled around.
“Just be sure and call us to make an appointment first,”
Breglio said.
The office’s number is 657-8137.
The
Coalition Starts To Split
But don’t
expect to question the impacts this week. Informal meetings
on the tax impact statements, which will show how much last
year’s taxes would be given new valuation, with equal
numbers going up as go down, proportionally, are currently
set to take place March 6 to 18, with appointments made
via the Olive Assessor’s office at 657-8137.
On Tuesday, February 28, reval manager Steve Beccio and
town Assessor-in-Training Bill Cook were going over veterans
exemption letters to point out to those taxpayers, among
the town’s 3115 or so property owners, who will be
available for tax exemptions of 15 percent if served during
a war, 25 percent if seen combat in a war, and up to 75
percent if disabled during a war.
Moreover, everyone was on pins and needles awaiting tax
impact figures from the county, which were not to be available
until after Thursday’s meeting, along with an analysis
of what, overall, has gone up, gone down or stayed basically
the same, tax-load wise.
Beccio and Cook joked about how neither would show up AFTER
impact statements. Beccio added an acedote about having
done such a thing once, following a reval in neighboring
Sullivan County, and having to answer tax questions from
individually angry residents for hours.
He pointed out on Tuesday that what he does is not about
amounts of taxes, a situation that only a town board can
determine, but the manner in which tax loads are distributed
between properties.
He said the most important information property owners have
received to date were the property descriptions they were
asked to look over and comment on in recent months. It was
on such information, based on past descriptions, many of
them handwritten, as well as outside site visits and a few
times when actual entry was allowed into homes, that the
town’s new values were set… along with recent
sales figures for homes throughout Olive.
Beccio said that since the town’s previous values
were at approximately 1/182 of full value, it will be hard
to compare properties based on prior tax information once
grievances start coming in in lieu of the town’s annual
tax grievance day, set this year for May 24. Starting that
morning the town’s five-person assessment review board,
made up of Paul Maloney, Claire Collins, Ron Bergeron, Bert
Ketchum and Doris Blakeley, will hear and judge complaints
from local residents who feel their assessments are too
high.
Beccio said that impacts will be grouped into increments,
from tax hikes or losses of less than $100 per year to those
between $100 and $300 a year, between $300 and $500 a year,
and over $500. He noted that he would not, and could not,
go into specifics about impacts. Previously, town assessments
were at under 1 percent of actual value, rendering comparables
difficult to make.
He said residents should remember that for every assessment,
or tax hike, there is an equal tax drop. He added that the
reval process has indicated “quite a bit of difference”
in how local properties are valued.
“People have to remember this is not about taxes.
All I can do is discern value,” Beccio said. “People
can try and demonstrate their ideas about such things by
grievance day.”
The informal meetings in March, he added, will be to answer
specific questions about values and property descriptions.
“What we did here was develop a model based on sales
over the last three years, adjusted for inflation, and apply
it to the properties in town,” Beccio said.
Asked whether an artificially high market would effect values,
he said not, as is the case, is all values go up or down
depending on that market.
Actual impacts, Beccio added, will be very iffy until the
county sets final figures for the massive Ashokan Reservoir
that is the town’s largest property sometime right
before May 1. At the moment, the assessors could not discuss
such assessments other than to note that the figures reached
two years ago in a settlement between New York City and
the town were only for Large Parcel valuation and do not
apply to town revaluation. A newly hired firm, Empire State
Appraisal Consultants, is currently going over such figures
in tandem with hired attorneys for the town.
“The number we’re using for the impact statements
going out later this week was put in by the county, based
on last year’s figures and inflation,” said
Beccio. “It’s all going to turn out to be relative,
excepting the general information regarding whether one’s
value has gone up or down.”
More on actual impacts when we come back March 30.
During the interim, feel free to let us know at olivefreepress@aol.com
just how your impacts have gone and whether the current
process has seemed fair or not.
Good luck!
Another
Rural Sun Sets
“What
I really don’t like is that they’re leaning
right over you to find out stuff and I’m not sure
that they’re going a bit too far into it,” said
Olivebridge farmer John Ingram.
How far in? In beneath the skin of every cow, horse, chicken,
pigeon, hog, trout, farmed fish or other livestock on the
registered and surveilled property in the form of a microchip
implant containing a Radio Frequency Identification Device
(RFID) keyed to Global Position coordinates for satellite
monitoring. The plan, scheduled to be finalized this summer,
will likely also include digital information like retinal
scans or DNA patterns. The animals’ owners will be
required to pay for the implantation procedures and, at
their own expense, to provide reports within 24 hours for
every time an animal leaves the property, loses a tag or
turns up missing.
The only exceptions to the new law will be large agribusiness
concerns, like Monsanto, Cargill Meat Solutions, Schering-Plough,
National Pork Producers Council and a few others, who worked
closely with the USDA in developing the system and will
be permitted to identify large groups of animals with a
single group number. The National Cattleman’s Beef
Association has been lobbying the House Agricultural Committee
to “privatize” the federal database under their
own control.
“That certainly would get expensive, if you had to
do it for every chicken, for instance,” Ingram noted,
“I don’t know how you can even start to catch
up to things like that.”
Ingram, who came to Olive when his grandparents moved here
in 1950, owns one of the last independent farms in the area
and has been working on a farm, as he recalls, for about
56 years. Ulster County listed 510 farms in 2005, down from
515 the previous year. Cattle and calves reside on 120 of
the county’s farms; beef cows on 74 and milk cows
on 28. Horse and pony populations are on 197 farms; hogs
and pigs on 29; sheep and lamb on 45; goats on 51; layer
chickens on 78 and broiler chickens on 15 and geese and
ducks on 19. Fifteen farms also keep bees but it is unclear
how bees might be implanted.
“In the ‘50’s and first few years of the
‘60’s or so, there were quite a few of the very
small- 10 to 13 cow dairy farms in Olive,” Ingram
remembered. “There were five dairy farms right here
between Krumville and Olivebridge with a dozen or fourteen
cows that shipped canned milk down to the creamery. Then,
they came out with a batch of rules and regulations saying
that if you’re going to be in the milk business, you
have to have a milk house and a refrigerated bulk tank so
that, instead of them coming around with a truck every day
to pick up the 100 lb. Cans with 80 lbs of milk in them
and having the creamery wash them and bring them back, they
wanted to come with a bulk truck with a stainless steel
tank they’d pump the milk into like an oil truck.
It was totally impractical for these little farms to have
everything they needed. It just didn’t work. Most
of these guys were getting pretty elderly and they just
dropped off one by one... Fox’s farm over there on
Mill Road was the biggest. He was up to milking 85 cows
a day and had two bulk tanks and used extra cans to hold
it till morning but it was a different operation than most
of the small farms.”
Some recall a dairy farm at Beechford Circle that maintained
a bottled milk route through town back in the ‘30’s
and ‘40’s and farmers routinely shipped their
products by rail at Brown Station and many local farms,
of course, kept poultry.
“At one time, this whole region was a great poultry
area,” said Ingram. “Everybody had 500, 600
chickens and shipped their eggs out to Kingston or wherever.
All these various and sundry older buildings you see today
as garages or whatnot were probably part of a sizable poultry
farm back then.”
Ingram’s own 250 acre spread is partly wooded but
he keeps beef cattle, horses, chickens and sows. “There’s
chickens of assorted ages and groups and sizes,” he
noted. “My daughter sells eggs. They’re free
range eggs rather than organic but they eat my wheat and
other good stuff.”
The benefits of the system cited in the USDA’s NAIS
Draft Strategic Plan are termed “illusory” by
Executive Director of Farm for Life, Mary Zanoni, and more
geared to drive small producers out of the market than protect
the health of consumers. The benefit of “enhancing
export markets for U.S. livestock products” by allowing
traceback when animal diseases are found is of no use to
small farmers, Zanoni argues, because they “sell to
their neighbors or consume the animal products themselves-
they don’t profit from ‘export markets.’
Small farmers and homesteaders raise their animals in natural
and healthy conditions- usually on pasture, with minimal
home-raised or organic grain, with plenty of space for exercise
and dispersal of waste- to assure that problems like BSE
and bacterial contamination won’t occur in the home-raised
animals destined for their own tables.” These are
problems, she points out, more particular to large packing
plants or crowded corporate farms and “by encouraging
increased consolidation of the meat industry, the NAIS would
actually make America’s food supply more unstable
and less safe.”
The economic burden, wherein “animal owners will have
to pay the tab for premises registration fees, individual
animal ID fees, reporting fees for events such as animals
leaving a given premises or being slaughtered, and for equipment
such as RFID tags, tag readers, or software needed to report
to the database,” is bound to effect competitive food
prices. Already on the financial edge, many small farms
will fold, Zanoni fears, reducing poultry’s genetic
diversity.
Compulsory registration of every home with even one livestock
animal with a 7-digit “premises ID number” entered
into the federal GPS system is only the start of the Big
Brother aspect of current legislation, as other current
and recent legislation dovetail into an alarming portrait
of the future. Bills like S1139-HR2669, now in Congress,
extend the forced RFID implanting of animals to household
pets.
Another little economic twist is that the original impetus
for the system in April 2002 came from the private membership
group, the National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA),
which includes most of the big players like Cargill and
Monsanto. But, when you look a little closer, you’ll
find that many of them are also marketers of RFID technology.
The USDA, departing for usual agency procedure, depended
upon a NIAA survey in the drafting of their plan but the
survey itself, according to NIAA’s own statement,
is nonscientific and “intellectual property”
from which the public is forbidden to quote.
The RFID pet market alone is projected at $5.7 billion a
year once the law, known as the Pet Animal Welfare Act of
2005 (PAWS) is passed and there’s no shortage of political
heavy-hitters flocking to the cause. Former Pennsylvania
Governor and Homeland Security Czar Tom Ridge, Former Wisconsin
Governor and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson
and even General Wesley Clark are vying for a piece of the
RFID action. In fact, Thompson, now on the board of the
VeriChip Corporation, has publicly pledged to have one of
the devices implanted in his own arm. A number of Mexican
officials were reported to have been implanted last November
and Homeland Security employees are already carrying RFID-tagged
cards. United Airlines employees tested RFID passports in
2005.
Soon, you may be an RFID carrier as well. In a vote split
largely on party lines, the House passed the “Real
ID Act” in February 2005 which mandates sophisticated
RFID implants into a national ID card (or tri-national,
actually, because the biometric information it contains
about you will be shared with our trading partners, Canada
and Mexico), bending back the Tenth Amendment to pressure
states to RFID implant driver’s licenses. Some religious
groups add that their constitutional rights will be violated
by the ID system, which they see as representing the “mark
of the beast” as described in scripture. The RFID
chips can carry information like virtual fingerprints or,
if they wanted, your 8th grade math scores.
Some corporations are already implanting employees. Can
forced human implants be far behind?
And, if you’re caught without one, who happens? Do
you wind up in one of the “detention and processing
facilities” the Department of Homeland Security has
awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root a
$385 million contract to construct? Heavens to Betsy!
John Ingram is thinking about writing letters to his political
representatives to try to stop NAIS before it finalizes
in July.
“I think this goes right back to big, big industry-
Cargill and Monsanto and these companies having too much
of a controlling interest in everything pertaining to agriculture,”
Ingram said. “Between sprays, genetically-engineered
seeding and all this other stuff, it’s just a matter
of putting more money in their pocket and that’s what
they’re doing...They’re saying ‘oh, we’ll
force out a bunch of the little guys because they don’t
want to mess with this’ and the next thing you know,
they’ve got a bigger control than ever.”
A
Jar Of Olives...
Have you noticed the addition on the Reservoir Methodist
Church in Shokan? The original church seems like a small
part of the larger facility. At one time the Church was
a combination of three small church buildings that will
now be consolidated in this new church hall and education
center.
Homeowners in Olive are suffering sticker shock as they
got their revaluation notices just prior to the Ides of
March. Remember that famous line from Julius Caesar: “Beware
the Ides of March!” Most property owners are pleased
with the value (They wouldn’t sell it for less!) but
horrified by the amount of taxes projected on last year’s
tax levy. The good news is that New York City’s Reservoir
properties are also being re-evaluated. Tax Assessor William
Cook said the new balance of residential and reservoir properties
will have a substantial and positive effect on lowering
many residential properties’ taxes.
Last night Vince (Dutch) Barringer was roasted and toasted
at the Holiday Inn in Kingston by over 160 guests. Vince
is retiring from a long career in public service. Vince
was Olive’s Supervisor from 1976 to 1981, and was
Olive Town Justice from 1970-1973 and again from 1986 to
2005. George Hass took the role of Roastmaster spicing up
Vince’s biography with jokes while Ron Wright, fellow
Town Justice, took the Toastmaster’s job of introducing
a dozen or more people who all had something nice to say
about our man of the hour. Joe Boek recalled how Vince went
quickly from Laborer to District Supervisor of the DEP in
record time. Tillie Osterhoudt summed it up when she said,
“ I have nothing but good things to say about this
man.”
Ernie Levins recalled when Vince played Santa at the West
Hurley School and brought homemade cookies to give out along
with the gifts. She called him “kind and compassionate,”
a phrase echoed throughout the evening. How compassionate?
Court Clerks Brenda Van Leuvan and Dawn Giuditta told how
Judge Barringer would drive someone home who was “under
the weather” and would share baked goods with the
defendants. Policewoman Dawn Beers jokingly added that one
time Vince suggested that she stop at an ATM on the way
to the County Jail so the prisoner could make bail.
Jack Molloy, former Assessor while Vince Barringer was supervisor,
recalled the time of gypsy moth infestation in the seventies.
Vince, like Bert Leifeld, could pinch a penny so hard it
would scream “Ouch!” To save some cost of spraying,
Vince and the late Bob Johansen piloted the spray plane
with hilarious results. Jack hinted that the moths won that
battle and that the Olive Air Force has not been called
into action since.
Helen Chase gave Vince a handmade Judge Doll and Bruce La
Monda gave him a lemon to squeeze with reference to the
protest over the Lemon Squeeze with advice to “Make
Lemonade if the State and City gives you lemons to squeeze.”
Bruce’s respect for Vince was stated in the words
of Martin Luther King who said, “The ultimate measure
of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and
convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and
controversy.” Friends, colleagues, neighbors, and
family agree that Vince has “stood tall” in
putting his sense of justice into words and action.
Councilperson Linda Burkhardt and Legislators Rob Parete
and Peter Kraft read letters from dignitaries from Governor
Pataki on down, and Vince was given the Pride of Ulster
County Award. The Town Board recognized Chris Barringer
for her support with flowers.
Supervisor Leifeld summed up the synergistic love and energy
of the evening when he said that he wanted to have the party
in Olive but we didn’t have a place big enough for
the festivities, so we had to come to Kingston. “You
can take us out of Olive, but you can’t take Olive
out of us!”
Once again, I end on a high note because it’s what
I wish for Olive. However, for those readers who perceive
me to be the Polyanna of Olive, I would like to share three
personal political statements to chew on that stick in my
craw:
1. Olive shouldn’t have a homeless person who is invisible
because we turn away without doing anything. We have enough
to share, and if we do nothing, we are part of the problem,
not the solution.
2. Bev Stein is right. Our dogs deserve better at the Town
Garage. Let’s have a fundraiser and right that inadequacy.
Now that Olive is in yet-another lawsuit with New York City,
are our neighbors who shared in the reservoir’s taxes
the year that the Large Parcel passed the school and legislature
stepping up to volunteer to pay court costs? Not that I
know of.
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