Editorial: Years of being starved of state aid, sales tax put Medina in hole when trying to update fire department

Photo by Tom Rivers: Medina needs a bigger fire hall and a new ladder truck, but the costs are overwhelming for a village of about 6,000 people when nearly the entire costs falls on village taxpayers. This photo from last March shows the ladder truck from 1996 barely fitting into the fire hall. The village is moving forward with a new ladder truck at $1.7 million that will be taller. It won’t fit in the current firehall. The new truck will be ready in about two years, giving the village sometime to get an addition done. However, that addition and repairs to the existing fire hall are projected to be around $6 million.

It doesn’t take a genius to see Medina is set up to hit a fiscal wall. The day of reckoning has arrived. The village faces a major expense for a new fire truck and an addition to the fire hall.

The village has a bustling downtown, many manufacturers and a strong sense of pride and civic involvement. It should be able to afford an upgrade to its fire hall and fire apparatus. But Medina is in Orleans County, where the village gets crumbs of the local sales tax.

The village in 2024 will get $160,160 in the county’s sales tax that will likely be close to $25 million. That is less than 1 percent of the total. The county has kept the total sales tax share to the four villages and 10 towns at the same level since 2001 – $1,366,671.

Since then the sales tax revenues have more than doubled. Wal-Mart and many chain stores came to the community, boosting the sales tax. Internet sales are taxed. Prices have gone way up, leading to a higher sales tax, but still the villages and towns haven’t got any of that increase.

The county says it has expenses and can’t afford to give up a little more of that sales tax, even if a lot of that money is generated by the work of the villages and towns. The county has acquired a former bank in Albion for the treasurer’s office for $250,000. It bought the former GCC site for probation and the district attorney’s office for $975,000, and 25.7 vacant acres near that property for $500,000. These purchases came without any public input. They weren’t talked about for years, with a clear need long established like the ladder truck and fire hall addition in Medina.

Medina is one of the county’s shining successes. It is a Hallmark movie scene with its many well-attended events, including the very popular Parade of Lights. The county loves to brag about Medina, showcasing the village in tourism brochures and with economic development outreach.

But the county can’t budge with the sales tax.

Medina is in a tough spot. It has committed to a $1.7 million purchase for a new ladder truck. The current 28-year-old truck often is out of service due to malfunctioning parts. The village should have replaced it about a decade ago. It has asked and begged for more sales tax from the county but has been rebuffed.

Medina has no choice but to move forward on the ladder truck. It’s an important truck in responding to calls in Medina, and also on mutual aid in nearby towns. The village will be paying $159,000 annually over 20 years for the new ladder truck. (Medina also has a 32-year-old fire engine in need of replacement.)

The village also must do an addition of its fire hall to accommodate a taller ladder truck. The current size is smaller than a typical ladder truck and would need to be specially ordered at a high price tag. The fire hall addition and repairs to the current fire station from the 1930s would be about $6 million, according to projections from an engineering firm.

The village is looking to scale back the building project, and residents are speaking out about the high taxes in the village. They assume the village is spending too much – that it’s the village’s fault.

The problem is a lack of revenue to help offset the local property taxes. If Medina’s local sales tax share had been doubled, like the county’s, since 2001, that would give the village another $160,060 – enough to cover the annual debt service for the new truck without putting more on the village taxpayers.

I thought the county legislators would be alarmed last March when Medina’s villages taxes crossed the $20 per thousand threshold. Medina’s tax rate went from $18.85 to $21.15 per $1,000 of assessed property. Albion is close behind at $19.13. These tax rates are way out of line compared to villages and small cities in neighboring counties. The City of Batavia for example just released its 2024-25 budget with a $8.96 tax rate. It receives $7,783,469 of the Genesee County sales tax.

As the village tax rates continued to climb and fire trucks got older, I thought for sure the Orleans County legislators would realize their stinginess with the sales tax (when many other counties share 50 percent with towns, villages and cities). But the county remains iron-clad in opposition to freeing up any more for the villages, even when they wrestle with critical equipment purchases while the county pursues projects that don’t seem so essential.

Orleans County isn’t the only one giving the Village of Medina the shaft. The state has kept Medina’s AIM amount at $45,523 the past 15 years. The state gives $715 million annually to cities, villages and towns through Aid and Incentives to Municipalities. This is a small amount of the state sales tax share given back to municipalities to help them with their costs of delivering services. Nearly all of the $715 million goes to cities, even ones smaller than the Village of Medina get much more.

Medina, population 6,047, receives $45,523 or a per capita of $7.53. The City of Mechanicville, population 5,163 in Saratoga County, gets $1,649,701 for a per capita $319.52. The City of Salamanca in Cattaraugus County, population 5,929, gets $928,131 in AIM funding or $156.54 per capita.

What a difference it would make for the Village of Medina, which operates very much a like a city, if it was getting Salamanca money from the state. The Orleans Hub has railed about this disparity for years but our state legislators don’t have news conferences or put out press releases on this issue.

The Village of Medina’s biggest obstacles to success: Orleans County and New York State.