To the Editor:

It should shock voters in Berne to learn that the town board used tax dollars to put together and distribute a falsity-laden “public information letter” trying to justify their inept and ridiculous elimination of most property tax revenue in the 2022 and 2023 budgets. 

They are trying to justify their equally ridiculous rate increase of 824 percent for 2024 and blaming The Enterprise for misrepresenting the confusing, out-of-control mess they made of Berne’s finances.  Apparently, the Berne Town Board thinks lying in an official publication is a public service.

This fraudulent board publication claims that the purpose of the GOP’s 87-percent tax reduction in 2022 (that continued at a similar rate in 2023) was sympathetically, lovingly, and carefully crafted by the board to give property owners COVID related tax relief. They portray this ridiculous tax decrease as the board’s response to hardships the property owners realized due to the covid pandemic.  Nothing could be further from the truth. 

I was at the meetings and budget workshops in the fall of 2021 as I was a board member at the time. I am very disturbed by this current misinformation and accusation (funded to reach all property owners with your tax dollars). I recall no mention of COVID relief as the rationalization for such an extreme, permanent drop in the tax rate.  

The 87-percent reduction was clearly intended as a permanent drop in the tax rate. I received no board emails that contradict this and there was no public board discussion that contradicts this that I can find reviewing the audio.

The Enterprise reported on this situation at the time. See the very informative Dec. 1, 2021 Enterprise article: “Lyons Proposes 88% tax cut while drawing on rainy-day and federal COVID funds.” It predicts that a nearly 800-percent rate increase will be necessary to correct the mistakes in the 2022 budget. The Enterprise was correct back in 2021.

At the Oct. 20, 2021, budget workshop, the Berne budget officer and architect of the 2022 budget, (then Berne Supervisor Sean Lyons), explained the proposed tax cut and made this statement in the process: 

“If we get anywhere near the tax cap in the next 20 years someone really did something wrong.”  (Transcript and audio are posted with this letter.)

Does that sound like a temporary COVID relief strategy? By the end of that meeting, he proposed permanently lowering the tax rate to 0 percent! Ultimately, they settled on an approximately 87-percent reduction.

He never even mentioned the pandemic as this was presented as a permanent reduction that could be sustained without exceeding the 2-percent state-set tax cap for the next 20 years. Is 824 percent more than 2 percent?

Have you received your $200 COVID rebate from the town yet? As I documented in a letter to the editor with attachments, the board actually did have a COVID relief strategy proposed in 2022 but that somehow disappeared without discussion in the final budget, coincidentally after Election Day when GOP candidates won every position. They bought those votes. Now where’s the money, Mr. Palow?

I suggest you ask Supervisor Dennis Palow what happened to your $200 rebate he promised for your vote. But don’t ask at a board meeting. He doesn’t allow questions and may have you dragged from the meeting by armed guards. 

So, their COVID relief efforts are now documented lies. Except they did inappropriately use federal COVID relief money in the sewer district two years in a row. The money collected was mistakenly too low for the 2021 payment due in November 2021 and in a budget workshop the bookkeeper said the payment was made with COVID relief money.

But then, for some odd reason, the same amount was again included in the 2022 budget. This promised those residents an exclusive, inappropriate fee break for two consecutive years just before Election Day in 2021. That money could have been used to benefit everyone in town. 

The votes of the sewer district residents were bought and paid for. But then those district residents had to pay it back a year later. Isn’t there a rule somewhere that requires actual payment when politicians buy votes? 

My concerns about this inappropriate use of funds were ignored in the October 2021 budget discussions. I can only wonder where that misappropriated, and then re-misappropriated federal money ended up.  

Also, in their “letter,” the board portrayed The Enterprise as a source of budget information that cannot be trusted because they don’t provide “all full” information. The Berne Town Board attacked the paper based on very false pretenses, blaming the reporter for the board’s shortcomings.

It was, in fact, the town board that didn’t provide the budget information required by law as The Enterprise reported. The Enterprise reporting was based on the illegally limited information made available by the board. How is that the reporter’s fault?

There was no way to understand and interpret the budget impacts during the budget process because the town board failed to follow the process prescribed by law. 

The board’s bogus public information letter also suggests that they just innocently went back to a $4.60 per thousand tax rate from 2016. Sound convincing? Not to me.

The state sales-tax share increased very significantly once online sales-tax collection began in earnest in 2019. The town received $280,000 for just one quarter in 2021 as the attached audio documents show.  Extrapolating, four quarters could result in nearly $1.2 million in town revenue in the 2022 budget! 

The board is intentionally providing a comparison that is a deliberate misrepresentation of the situation.  The 2016 rate of $4.60 reflects a time when sales-tax share was very low and so property tax had to be significantly higher.  Why should the property tax be so high in 2024 with all that 2024 sales tax share? It shouldn’t. 

My advice to Berne residents: Don’t trust any information provided by the Berne Town Board while Supervisor Palow is in charge.

Joel Willsey

East Berne

Editor’s note: Supervisor Dennis Palow could not immediately be reached for comment. 

Former Supervisor Sean Lyons told The Enterprise in an email that he stood by the comments he had made at the 2021 budget workshop, blaming the current Berne tax increases on President Joe Biden. 

“Yes two years of Joe Biden have ruined our economy, that is the something really wrong,” he wrote. “I cannot comment on this years budget process as I was not involved. What I will say is I stand behind this board and if they follow the principle of Taxation With Representation (something not seen prior to republicans taking office in Berne) then the added taxes will be worth it to better our town.”

In The Enterprise coverage area, only Berne overrode the state-set tax cap for this year’s budget.

The statements made in the town board’s letter reflected The Enterprise’s reporting on the 2024 budget.