To the Editor:

Though it spends $600 million of our money every year, most residents are not really sure what the Albany County Legislature does. That’s my conclusion after personally visiting every home in the 29th Legislative District (Carman Road and Western Avenue area).

The legislature has an interest in keeping you in the dark. Hardly anyone is familiar with the formula used to distribute sales tax.

Every county in the state gets to sets its own rules on how it divvies up the pie. In Albany County, the sales-tax pie is a whopping $250 million a year, nearly three times what residents and businesses pay in county property taxes (about $90 million).

Guilderland gets about a third what the city of Albany gets even though Crossgates Mall generates a fortune in sales tax. Yet, we have to catch and prosecute every shoplifter there and we must respond to every fire, medical, and disturbance call. We incur many of the costs without reaping the full benefits of the sales tax.

There is only one reason for this unfairness — politics. City of Albany representatives dominate the legislature and shift revenue to the city.

Guilderland’s streets are not paved in gold. We need our fair share to lessen a heavy tax burden that has driven people out of Guilderland.

I have proposed that we be allowed to apply some of the sales tax that we generate as a credit on our county property tax bills. This reduction in taxes is fair and long overdue. It won’t be easy to make this happen, but what great accomplishments ever are?

Mark Grimm

Guilderland

Editor’s note: Republican Mark Grimm is running to represent the 29th District in the Albany County Legislature.