North Country voters send mixed messages on property taxes

It’s a conventional wisdom of North Country politics that folks are furious about high property taxes.

But in recent weeks, voters and local leaders from Elizabethtown to Lake Luzerne to Port Henry have sent a very different message.

In Port Henry this week, residents decided to keep their village government, despite assurances that dissolving a layer of bureaucracy would save them at least 24% on their property tax bills.

Disbanding the village had strong backing from conservative activists, including a newly formed regional group called Unshackle Upstate.

“Each of those [local governments] have an inherent cost to them,” said Unshackle director Brian Sampson.

But local voters decided to maintain their two separate governments, by a decisive margin of 186-146.

Meanwhile, in Lake Luzerne, officials at the Hadley-Luzerne Central School District were considering deep budget cuts and planning lay-offs.

Even with those proposed cuts, taxpayers in the area were facing a 17% property tax hike.

But on Monday, local residents turned up at a meeting and demanded that the teachers be reinstated.

“There were several people who said, ‘Don’t change anything, and leave [the tax hike] at 30 percent, and we would support it,'” board president Lisa Moses told the Glens Falls Post-Star.

Some elected officials tell me point-blank that they think North Country residents will agree to pay more local property and sales taxes, if that’s what it takes to maintain government jobs and services.

“I don’t think people will have a choice at that point,” says Cathy Moses, town supervisor in Schroon.

“I think if you want to be part of a community, if you’re going to be part of a county, I think that we’re all going to have to tighten the belts and work together.”

The next big test of this question — higher taxes vs. deep spending cuts — may come as Essex County residents decide the fate of the Horace Nye nursing home.

The facility, with a hundred elderly residents, loses around $4 million a year, even after state and Federal subsidies.

County leaders have formed a panel to review Horace Nye’s future.

“That’s one of those services that we’ve got to decide, either we stay in the nursing home business or we don’t,” said Essex County manager Dan Palmer, speaking in December.

“I’m not sure we can,” he added.

But last month, Essex County officials insisted that there was no chance the nursing home would close.

“I don’t believe it’s the intention to close Horace Nye Nursing Home,” Moriah town supervisor Tom Scozzafava told the Plattsburgh Press-Republican.

“We need to make it clear it is not our intent to close down and get out of the nursing-home business,” he said.

As state aid dwindles, this debate is one that locals will likely have to wrestle with again and again.

Do we mean it when we say that property taxes have pushed us to the breaking point?

Or are we really willing to pay more — maybe a lot more — to maintain the services we and our neighbors have come to rely on?

Your thoughts welcome.