Galef Discussion board Touches on Tourism, Taxes

The MP also proposes a merger of the school district

Congregation members Sandy Galef and Philipstown on Saturday (January 23) “scaled up” tourism management, taxing the rich, consolidating school districts and coping with a local COVID-19 world.

Galef, a Democrat whose Philipstown district is a part of, hosted City Hall online as a replacement for the face-to-face forum she held at the start of each pre-pandemic legislature, typically at the Butterfield or Desmond-Fish libraries.

Tourism administration

On January 23, attention immediately turned to tourism management – or its lack.

Nat Prentice, a garrison resident who chaired a committee Recommended updates to the Philipstown Comprehensive Plan, described the challenges of trying to deal with “too many people visiting and no money”.

He called for coordination between levels of government to meet basic needs such as keeping public toilets open in the visitor center on Main Street in Cold Spring during winter. Prentice, vice president of the Cold Spring Chamber of Commerce, said he and several other volunteers are scrubbing the bathrooms and occupying the center.

“Visitor management is all a little bogged down,” and it shouldn’t be just a jurisdiction to deal with it, he said. But he called the situation “an opportunity, not a problem”.

Finding that the state does not fund the maintenance of public toilets, Galef suggested Putnam implement a nationwide approach to helping towns and villages with tourism, despite acknowledging that “no one has tourism like you” in Cold Spring. “It’s hard,” she said. “It’s a big problem for you and I understand that.”

The Putnam Legislation last year eliminated a $ 7,500 scholarship Cold Spring had set it up for garbage collection. It also doesn’t share sales tax revenue with its cities or villages, which is a constant source of friction. “The county should share sales tax with Cold Spring,” Galef said. “You bring in all of the sales tax. At the county level, it’s a lot easier to take all of the money, but it’s fairer to let it be distributed. “

At a county meeting in December, Putnam’s finance commissioner Bill Carlin said that New York State had recently started withholding some sales tax revenue from counties and distributing it to towns and villages through a program called Aid and Incentives for Municipalities (AIM).

According to data shared with the Legislature’s Audit Committee on Monday (Jan. 25), AIM payouts to Philipstown in 2020 were $ 33,820. $ 16,537 for Cold Spring; and $ 3,343 to Nelsonville.

To cover the cost of the public toilets, Galef proposed charging a small fee, which is common in Europe.

Government spending

Galef said state officials are tentatively planning a budget of $ 193 billion for fiscal year 2021-22. As Governor Andrew Cuomo warned earlier this month, New York could run into a $ 15 billion deficit, translating into an overall spending cut of 20 percent, said Galef, chairman of the meeting’s real estate tax committee.

President Joe Biden has proposed $ 1.9 trillion in stimulus finance, but Galef says some members of Congress appear “to be reluctant to have to help state governments.”

To increase revenue, according to Galef, Cuomo is considering several ideas, including higher taxes for residents who earn $ 5 million or more annually. But the income from this hike would be relatively small and “underestimate the needs of New Yorkers,” Jeff Mikkelson, a Cold Spring resident, told Galef.

“Control the richest more,” added Tara Vamos, another Cold Spring resident.

However, Galef noted that there are fears that an excessive tax hike could lead the wealthy to move to lower-tax states. “We run into it all the time,” she said. “We have to think these things through” because of unforeseen effects.

Mikkelson argued that there is no evidence to support the idea that higher taxes make the rich move. “They can afford to live wherever they want,” he said, adding that California has raised taxes on its top earners and “California certainly has no shortage of rich people.”

School association

Galef wondered why Philipstown wasn’t merging its two school districts, Haldane and Garrison, to save money, an idea that has been debated for decades.

“Maybe it needs an arbitrator,” like the state government, to push through consolidation, said Prentice. Both districts are relatively small: Haldane has about 800 students from Kindergarten to 12th grade and Garrison has about 220 from Kindergarten to 8th grade. One challenge is that Garrison has a lower tax rate than Haldane.

Health info

After residents expressed frustration over their inability to get COVID-19 vaccinations or what they believed was timely information from Putnam County, Galef suggested that the county health authorities share some services. As a partial remedy, she and the forum participants discussed ways to remotely connect computer-savvy students and young adults with seniors and others who lack computers or Internet connections.

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