VN 5/13 - WCCS Taxpayers
The Wayland-Cohocton School Board needs to hear from you. Attend the Wayland-Cohocton Central School District Budget Hearing in the LGI Auditorium at WCCS in Wayland on Tuesday, May 13th from 7–9 pm.
This public hearing is important because your real estate tax bill is facing a dramatic increase this coming year. Meanwhile, UPC/First Wind refuses to pay their fair share to the WCCS. The PILOT (Payment In Lieu Of Taxes) arranged by SCIDA is a pittance compared to the $2,000,000 plus a year in school taxes that would be assessed on the real value of the development if the owners of the industrial wind factory in Cohocton were to pay based on their assessment and current tax rate, like the rest of us folks.
And who are the owners of this privileged project? That’s a well-kept secret, but you can be pretty sure that the real equity owners are the super-rich who invest in these projects as tax shelters, not residents of rural upstate New York.
The Town of Naples and the Town of Prattsburgh have filed legal actions against SCIDA PILOTS and are now in court. These school districts stand to reap big dividends. But the Wayland-Cohocton School Board has refused to file its own suit so far. You, the hard pressed taxpayer, will be told to pay a large tax increase this coming year, but UPC/First Wind will get a huge tax exemption that will last for twenty years. Some school board members may even have vested family benefit putting their profit above your interest.
Attend the public hearing on May 13th and demand that the Wayland-Cohocton School Board file a legal action on all of our behalf. If Naples and Prattsburgh School Boards are fighting for their property owners, our Board should do the same. If they refuse to respond to the fiscal welfare of taxpayers, send a loud and clear message and VOTE DOWN the proposed WCCS Budget at the annual school budget vote to be held in the LGI Auditorium on Tuesday, May 20th. Polls open at 10 am and close at 8 pm. Thank you for getting the word out to your friends!
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Voters in the Wayland-Cohocton school district approved a $27.69 million budget, up $206,000, or 5.67 percent, from the $26.19 million budget passed last year, by a vote of 405-149.
In the budget, the school will levy $6.45 million in property taxes on the district, up $2.24 percent from $6.3 million in the 2007-08 budget.
Taxpayers wil see a tax rate of $17.06 per $1,000 of true assessed property value, up $0.38, or 2.28 percent, from last year’s tax rate of $16.68 per $1,000.
A property owner living in a $50,000 house with the Basic STAR exemption will pay approximately $511.80, up $11.40 from last year’s $500.40.
The public will see the full budget at a hearing at 7 p.m. May 13 in the Large Group Instruction Room at the Wayland campus.
Incumbent John Sick received 431 votes in his bid for re-election, and newcomer Philip Trautman garnered support for the other open post on the board with 382 votes.
Other propositions included increasing the schools payments to local libraries. Under the proposition, the Wayland Free Library Association will receive an additional $5,000, the E.J. Cottrell Library in Atlanta will get $2,000 more and an additional $10,000 is earmarked for the Cohocton Public Library. The proposition was approved by a vote of 392-144.
Voters also approved a proposition establishing a new vehicle and equipment reserve fund, which will ultimately set aside $2 million for new buses and other equipment, by a vote of 399-133.
It's fascinating to me that "Yes! Wind Power for Cohocton" has sent this comment, crowing about the WCCS budget (with its 5.67% tax increase for property owners) passing by a wide margin with clearly no benefit from the massive wind power project in town. You would think the "Yes!" folks would be tripping over themselves to tell us how much their project is going to help, but no mention is made of PILOT payments at all, since they will obviously have little if any effect on our school taxes. This is the very point of our article: UPC ("First") Wind's $250,000,000 boondoggle on our hills really isn't going to help the schools, and our school administrators have turned a deaf ear. What is even more discouraging, however, is that town voters themselves seem to have bought into the entire charade. Some people may never be able to figure out just how badly we're all being ripped off by UPC in the name of being "green" world citizens.