{"id":3342,"date":"2010-12-06T07:10:16","date_gmt":"2010-12-06T12:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=3342"},"modified":"2010-12-06T07:10:17","modified_gmt":"2010-12-06T12:10:17","slug":"morning-read-a-20-tax-hike-for-franklin-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/12\/06\/morning-read-a-20-tax-hike-for-franklin-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Morning Read: A 20% tax hike for Franklin County"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a growing disconnect between the debate over taxes in Albany and Washington and the reality on the ground in county seats across the North Country.<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that costs for government are spiraling upward, in part because the recession has sparked far more demand for crucial services — everything from housing assistant to heating and food aid.<\/p>\n

Big league politicians have planted a flag on the high ground of No New Taxes.\u00a0 Which means that local politicians often have no choice but to pass along costs to the only taxpayers they can tap.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, property taxes often hit people who don’t have much actual cash.\u00a0 Seniors on fixed incomes, families who are land-rich and income-poor, locals who have inherited family camps on waterfront.<\/p>\n

Last Friday, that reality came home in a big way when Franklin County legislators totted up a 20.42% property tax increase.\u00a0\u00a0 And that’s after laying off more than a dozen people.<\/p>\n

This from Jessica Collier at the Adirondack Daily Enterprise<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The budget features a definite reduction of 16 county jobs, with three to six additional ones that may be eliminated, county Manager Jim Feeley said at a Board of Legislators meeting Thursday.<\/p>\n

Five of the eliminated positions are employees being laid off from the county nursing home: two certified nursing assistants, a dietary technician, a housekeeper and a launderer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because of reductions in aid from Albany, lawmakers were forced to boost overall property tax revenues by roughly $2 million, even though the overall Franklin County budget was down slightly.<\/p>\n

One issue that gets raised a lot in these debates is the plague of unfunded mandates.\u00a0 I’ll be posting about that later today.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, what do you think?\u00a0 Is this a reasonable price to pay, to help our neighbors with crucial services during hard times?\u00a0 Or an unsustainable tax burden?\u00a0 Or maybe both?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a growing disconnect between the debate over taxes in Albany and Washington and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[22,10,4834,4803,20,4836,4835],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3343,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342\/revisions\/3343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}