County formula cuts sales tax to villages

By Tom Rivers, Editor Posted 12 December 2014 at 12:00 am

Villages see share drop from $404,666 in 2013 to $398,110 in 2015

ALBION – The revenue-starved villages in Orleans County will see their shares of the sales tax for towns and villages drop because of a formula that ties the town and village share to their assessments.

The towns’ assessments are going up while the villages have been shrinking in recent years.

The county takes in about $15 million in sales tax. Since 2001, it has set aside $1,366,671 from that total for the 10 towns and villages. In 2013, the four villages – Albion, Holley, Lyndonville and Medina – received $404,661. That fell to $400,681 in 2014 and the apportionment for 2015 drops the village share to $398,111.

The Village of Albion will get $175,305, which is down from $180,457 in 2013. Medina’s share is $159,586 next year (down from $160,988 in 2013), with Holley at $47,746 (down from $48,596 in 2014) and Lyndonville at $15,473 (compared to $15,511 in 2014).

To determine the village share, the county divides the village taxable value by the town taxable value. As the villages lose assessed value and the towns gain, the village share gets smaller.

For example, in the Town of Albion, the village accounted for 57.14 percent of the total taxable value in 2015. The village was 57.45 percent in 2014 and 58.59 percent in 2013.

The apportionment for 2015 includes the following amounts per town: Albion, $115,666; Barre, $64,536; Carlton, $95,418; Clarendon, $116,261; Gaines, $86,558; Kendall, $86,813; Murray, $111,220; Ridgeway, $124,828; Shelby, $101,179; and Yates, $66,082.