WPCNR MR. & MRS. & MS. WHITE PLAINS VOICE. May 5, 2005: A reader has written commenting on the passing of the 2005-2006 City Budget Wednesday evening by the Common Council. He detects a pattern:
========================================================
Stealth taxes
The White Plains Common Council just passed the 2006 budget with a 4.6% property tax increase. The expenditures may be necessary and reasonable, but I am concerned that the budget was constructed in such a way that it obscured its true impact, and diminished its validity as a planning tool.
It is difficult to judge to total impact of fees and taxes, since many of them – such as sales taxes – are paid in small amounts all though the year. We pay for our services as fees, as fees and taxes added to our utility bills, as additional taxes on gas, and as general sales taxes. I fear that these sources of revenue are so popular not because they are appropriate, but precisely because their total cost is hidden. I estimate that roughly 45% of my tax burden was from sources other than income and property taxes. In gasoline taxes alone, I paid almost 33% of what I paid in property taxes; while my utility bill fees and taxes exceed my property taxes. Yet a property tax increase will generate significantly more bad press than, say, an additional charge on the phone bill.
The city extended the .5% sales tax increase. The small number is deceiving. I estimate that this could cost me as much as a 15% property tax increase. In addition, this is a very regressive tax, affecting the lower income residents more that the wealthily. I suppose that the intent is to milk the transient shopper, but this is short sighted.
When the Parking Authority was made a city department, their reserves of $6,200,000 were transferred to the city Fund Balance. Because of the importance to the city of adequate parking and the cost of the structures, I believe that maintaining a separate budget and reserve made planning sense, and that absorbing the Authority was done just to gain access to their reserves.
The charter mandates that the city cannot anticipate any more revenue than what was received in the current year. This is a relatively conservative approach and can be frustrating in years were revenue growth is anticipated. To circumvent this requirement, the city included as 2006 income the proceeds from the sale of city owned land, and money form the Fund Balance.
This was justified by 1) it has been done that way in the past, and 2) we do not really expect to use any of the money. To which I say 1) the state budget has been late for the last 20 years, but that does not make it right, and 2) so? -- the point is that you are frustrating the fiscal constraints outlined by the charter.
D Hughes.
