To the Editor:

We appreciate the Enterprise’s reporting on “Town taxes to jump 162% for Altamont residents.” Unfortunately, this was the first time anyone in the village of Altamont government was informed or notified about this massive change in the town budget, with such profound ramifications for our residents. Your reporting included the following statement from the Town Supervisor: “We treat village residents as town residents,” Barber said, noting that the village also works cooperatively with the town.

As mentioned, we do work cooperatively with the town, the county, and other partners in government in order to best serve the people of Altamont. In that spirit, one would have expected the town to alert the village, much less the residents of Altamont, who are affected. We received no email, phone call, or physical mail. There was no Nixle alert from the town, no post on the town website, nor any mass communication about this. Even someone who attended or watched town board meetings would have had no advance notice about this.

In fact, we’ve had difficulty getting responses from the town or meetings with town officials in recent weeks, which was slightly perplexing. Unless the recommendations from the state comptroller arrived at Town Hall on Wednesday, and the town made an extraordinary effort to implement these recommendations before its Thursday meeting, it’s hard to wonder if Election Day contributed to this silence. A 162-percent increase in town property taxes would no doubt have generated significant conversations before last week’s elections. And yet our recently re-elected town officials miraculously managed to avoid any public mention of this until their uncontested bids were confirmed on Tuesday.

Transparency, communication, and timing aside, it is difficult for us to argue or even just explain to our residents what is going on and why. The report from the comptroller’s office is not posted yet, and as previously stated, nothing has been communicated to the village or to taxpayers, besides what has been reported by The Enterprise.

At first glance, the towns of New Scotland and Colonie appear to apply their sales tax revenue to their funds that support the villages of Voorheesville and Colonie. It would be useful to understand why Guilderland has to change the way it uses sales-tax revenue, why the change had to happen so suddenly, and without public comment. However, there are already some points that bear discussion and clarification.

First, as The Enterprise reported, the Town Supervisor stated, “…the village has its own government, has its own taxes; it has its own mayor, parks, police, and other departments. So again, the idea is we’re not going to overlap in providing services.” This is all true, and so a reasonable person might wonder why the “A Fund” (which covers the entire town, including the village) pays for some of these overlaps. Why do village residents pay for the town board’s salary, when we have our own mayor and village board? Why do we pay for Town Court, when we have our own Village Court?

Second, we appreciate The Enterprise pressing the town supervisor on what town services warrant such a tax hike. From last week’s article: “Barber named highway work, police back-up, helping with transportation for seniors, and assistance with information technology.” The dedicated Village of Altamont Department of Public Works maintains, among other things, our own village roads. There are state, county, and town roads in and around the village that we do not maintain, because they are not our roads. There are plenty of mutual aid and shared services arrangements we have with Guilderland highway and police, as we do with other municipalities.

Remarkably, none of those other municipalities has felt obligated to tax, much less raise taxes, on our village. Assistance with information technology is news to us as well. Therefore, it would be great to dig deeper into what village residents are truly getting from these budget lines and discuss whether these charges belong in Fund A or Fund B, or whether they should be split across the funds. Instead, these changes were unilaterally implemented without a moment of discussion or questioning.

This isn’t meant to be a tit-for-tat score-keeping exercise, but instead we hope to illustrate that this is likely a complicated issue that requires careful discussion before raising taxes 162 percent on village residents. In the end, we would like to work with our partners in the town government to ensure we’re doing what is best for all our residents. The village of Altamont and the Altamont Fire Department, for example, have had no issue hosting a Guilderland Emergency Medical Services paramedic ambulance within the already cramped quarters of our fire station. Even though this station benefits the residents of Guilderland outside the village, and the residents of Knox, we haven’t sought any sort of cost share or rent. As a result, this tax hike on our residents with no notice and no discussion is extraordinarily disappointing.

To our residents: We apologize that we were not informed in advance of this decision, and we apologize that our town taxes will increase 162 percent.  However, we understand how important the services that local government provides are, and we will continue to find the best ways to coordinate a whole-of-government approach to these services. We will also continue to investigate this issue and communicate what we learn as new information becomes available.

Kerry Dineen

Mayor

Nicholas Fahrenkopf

Michelle Ganance

John Scally

Sandra Serafino

Trustees

Village of Altamont

See related letter from the Town of Guilderland.