Rates lower
Taxes less then predicted for GCSD



GUILDERLAND — Tax rates will be lower than was predicted when voters went to the polls in May to pass a $79 million Guilderland school budget.

Guilderland residents will pay $18.93 per $1,000 of assessed value. That means the owner of a $200,000 home will pay $3,786 in school taxes this year.

This is an increase of 58 cents or 3.13 percent over last year.

The district had, in May, estimated a tax hike of 4.2 percent.

The district had to make a last-minute adjustment — 4 cents more per $1,000 — on the newly calculated rate.

Assistant Superintendent for Business Neil Sanders told the school board last Tuesday that Carol Wysomski, Guilderland’s assessor, was notified of a new state mandate that very day. The mandate requires special franchise assessment, such as for National Grid, Verizon, and fiber optic companies, to be valued at the current equalization rate, not at full value.

In the past, Sanders related, the franchises were included on the tax rolls at 100 percent or full value. For 2006-07, the state-set equalization rate of 84.12 percent for Guilderland must be applied to the special assessments, lowering the town’s overall assessment by about $5.2 million.

Wysomski told The Enterprise this week that she had known of the new mandate since May but had been told by the state to use the town’s equalization rate, which was then at 100 percent, since Guilderland had revalued all properties the year before.
Asked why, just a year out from town-wide revaluation the equalization rate had changed so dramatically, Wysomski said, "The market is just outrageous." She explained that, in just a year, property values have increased 16 percent.

Sanders told The Enterprise that the school district was able to come up with a tax rate that was lower than initially anticipated because of two factors — $150,000 was taken from the district’s fund balance to lower the rate, and the new assessments from the town were more than double what had been anticipated.

The district had figured on an increase in assessments in Guilderland of $15 million; instead, the increase over the previous year was a little more than $40 million.

Guilderland properties within the school district are valued at about $2.7 billion, Sanders said, and, historically, the district has figured on about $15 million to $20 million in new assessments every year.
The timetables for the school and the town "do not mesh"," said Sanders. "We need assessment information sooner than the town needs to have it for the state."

Wysomski told The Enterprise that the $40 million increase in assessment was largely due to new residential development.
"The houses being built today are $400,000 or more. You have just 10 of those and that’s $4 million," she said.

The only major commercial additions were the new Walgreens at the intersection of routes 20 and 155, only half of which counted this year, and the new doctors’ office complex on Carman Road, only 30 percent of which counted.

Because of older homes in Guilderland, the average house price town-wide is $185,000, she said.
Asked if this trend is likely to continue, Wysomski said, "Sales are slowing down some, but I haven’t seen any drop in prices"It’s scary; it really is. I look at these young people and ask, ‘What do they do"’"

"Absolutely fantastic"
"I think this is absolutely fantastic news," said Hy Dubowsky at last Tuesday’s meeting as he and the seven other board members present approved the rate.
Dubowsky had made a maverick motion at his first board meeting, in July, to keep the tax hike as predicted but to spend up to $200,000 for "enhanced educational services." Other board members said the proposal would undermine the budget process.
Last Tuesday, Dubowsky praised the school staff and offered kudos to the town for the overall increase in assessment, accomplished, he said, without "big box stores" or "big neon lights."

In June, the school board had debated at length what to do with a $400,000 surplus in the fund balance. The rainy-day account would have totaled $1.99 million by the end of the fiscal year, which would have been over the 2 percent of next year’s budget allowed by the state.

While some school-board members in June said the money should be returned to the taxpayers, the majority prevailed, in split votes, determining the surplus would be put into reserve funds — $100,000 into a tax certiorari reserve fund, and$3000, into a newly-created retirement contribution reserve fund.

The tax levy this year will raise about $55 million with over 90 percent coming from Guilderland. Small pieces of three other towns also fall in the Guilderland School District.

District residents in Bethlehem and New Scotland — both with state-set equalization rates of 100 percent — will pay $15.92 per $1,000 of assessed value. This represents a $10.90 decrease, a decrease of about 41 percent, for Bethlehem residents and a $9.05 decrease, a decrease of about 36 percent, for New Scotland residents. Both of those towns recently went through town-wide property revaluation.

Residents of Knox, a town which has not revalued its property in recent years, will pay $24.49 per $1,000 of assessed valuation, an increase of 3 cents or .10 percent over last year.