Says taxes for villagers too much to bear

Editor’s note: This article was updated after an earlier version incorrectly said residents outside the village in the town of Shelby would see an $18 tax increase with a village dissolution and town merger. Those residents would see taxes go down by $18 for an $80,000 property, according to One Medina.

MEDINA – The four-page newspaper arrived in the mail on Monday or Tuesday with the lead story proclaiming, “Medina suffers from too much government.” The story is accompanied by pictures of three grand mansions that are falling into disrepair after several years of vacancy.

Leaders of One Medina, a grass roots group pushing dissolution of the village and consolidation of the towns of Shelby and Ridgeway, want to see less government costs in the community.

“We need a much more efficient government if we’re ever going to thrive again,” according to the lead article without a byline. “We need One Medina – and we need it now, before it’s too late.”

Nathan Pace, an attorney in Medina, welcomes readers to the first edition. He is chairman of One Medina with David Barhite, a former village trustee. The newsletter states “triple taxation” is proving too much for villagers, resulting in falling property values, a dwindling population and “sky-high” taxes.

The “One Medina Register” was mailed to every address in Medina’s zip code, including residents outside the village in the towns of Shelby and Ridgeway. One Medina is privately funded without taxpayer dollars.

“We want to show people what One Medina is and what we’re about,” Barhite said in an interview. “We want to see it go to one government. It really makes sense.”

Pace was chairman of a Medina/Ridgeway/Shelby consolidation committee in 2011 that included town representatives. That group concluded a village dissolution and merger of the two towns was the best way to provide lower cost government services.

One Medina notes the town leaders previously embraced a merger, but have been working against the village dissolution, spending at least $6,000 for a public relations firm, attorney and accountant to discredit the plan.

Barhite writes an article about how villagers pay town taxes, but yet get little in return for that money. He urges village residents to vote for dissolution to reduce their taxes by about 30 percent.

The One Medina Register includes a reprinted article highlighting Seneca Falls experience with dissolution. The former Journal-Register in Medina interviewed Don Earle, town supervisor of Seneca Falls, and he said the community has had a good experience with dissolution, bringing down village taxes with a slight increase outside the village.

One Medina has quotes from mayors in Le Roy and Wilson, expressing their support for dissolution in their communities.

“My goal is to be the last mayor of Le Roy,” Gary Rogers of Le Roy tells The Daily News on June 5. “I think we should be proactive. I think this is the future – it’s how we save New York.”

One Medina has a tax calculator at its web site (click here) that determines the tax savings in the village or the increase outside the village. A village resident in Ridgeway with an $80,000 house would see taxes drop by $415 while a villager in Shelby would see a $536 savings.

Residents outside the village in Ridgeway with an $80,000 would have their taxes go up $249 with dissolution, while Shelby outside-village residents would see a $65 increase, according to One Medina.

If the two towns merged, villagers would see bigger savings while Ridgeway residents outside the village would have taxes go up $71 with an $80,000 assessment and Shelby outside-village resident would see an $18 decrease.

The last page of the newspaper from One Medina includes letters to the editor about dissolution that were published on the Orleans Hub, Journal-Register and The Daily News.

“We’re trying to get the facts out there,” Barhite said.

The two towns have been working against the village dissolution. However, last month the two Town Boards met with the Village Board to talk about shared services. The towns said they would look at non-emergency services in the village and see what could be picked up by the towns.

Barhite said shared service talk previously didn’t move forward, and he doubts it would bring significant savings to villagers. It might also result in a bigger tax increase to the outside-village residents than dissolution, Barhite said.

The One Medina supporters are committed to streamlining local government, he said.

“We are people who believe in less government,” he said.

The Village of Medina, for the first time, has sent bills – totaling more than $30,000 – to the towns of Ridgeway and Shelby to help pay costs from the Niagara County Water District, the water provider for the community.

Medina has paid the full shot of the “ad valorum” costs since the two towns started hooking into the village water system more than two decades ago. That bill is currently $134,437 and is due Aug. 31.

An auditor, Bonadio & Co., went through Medina’s books and told village officials it shouldn’t bear that full NCWD charge. The firm tried to determine a fair share of the charge and calculated $24,171 for Shelby water users and $6,748 for Ridgeway water users.

The village would still pay about $100,000 of the charge. The village sent letters to the two towns in April, notifying them they would now be expected to pay towards the NCWD charge.

Shelby has refused to pay, and Ridgeway hasn’t responded.

The issue comes when Shelby is trying to renew contracts with the village to provide the water for town water districts. The village buys the water from the Niagara County Water District and then sells it to the towns. Before Medina signs off on a new contract, it wants Shelby to agree to help pay the charge to the NCWD.

Two village trustees, Marguerite Sherman and Mike Sidari, questioned the hardball stance, especially as Shelby pursues a new water district and needs Medina to formally approve an agreement, supplying the water.

“Are we going to hold people’s lives and health in the balance over this?” Sidari asked at Monday’s Village Board meeting.

He urged the board to sign off on the water supply agreement so the water districts could move forward. Trustee Marguerite Sherman also wants the village to sign off on the agreements so Shelby doesn’t miss out on a grant or have its water project delayed.

Mayor Andrew Meier said the village is obligated to pursue the funds from the two towns, especially after being put on notice from the auditors. The village shouldn’t have to subsidize the town water users, Meier said.

The water districts can move ahead if Shelby signs the agreement and agrees to help pay the NCWD charge, Meier said.

Town of Shelby Attorney David Schubel, in a June 20 letter to village attorney Matthew Brooks, said town officials don’t believe the NCWD fee applies to the town because the village is NCWD’s water customer. The “ad valorum charge” is applied to the village to ensure Medina receives the same water rates enjoyed by communities in Niagara County, Schubel said, citing a meeting with NCWD officials.

The village adds 1.6 times the village water rate or about another $1.50 per 1,000 gallons to the town rate. Schubel said that added cost should be enough to pay the NCWD charge and other village costs.

“It would seem that a premium rate of 1.6 should be adequate to cover the actual cost of water and the related costs incurred by the Village in supplying water to the Town and the ad valorum charge,” Schubel said in his letter.

He noted the town is working on two water districts that will need water supply agreements with the village. Schubel sent another letter on July 23 requesting the village approve the water supply agreements.

Shelby officials don’t see the “ad valorum charge” as a mandated or imposed charge from the NCWD, but a membership fee, Schubel said in his letter.

But Medina Attorney Matthew Brooks sees it differently. An August 1993 water supply agreement with the Town of Shelby obligates the village to seek a share of the ad valorum charge, Brooks said.

That agreement says, “Shelby further agrees to pay Medina the actual costs and charges which shall be, from time-to-time, mandated or imposed by the Niagara County Water District, concerning sales of water outside of Niagara County, in lieu of charges assessed from Niagara County Water District in Niagara County taxes, deficits and charges.”

Brooks said the issue could very well go to litigation.

“Right now the town only pays for the water it uses,” Brooks told the Village Board. “To say, ‘We don’t have to pay any additional water,’ doesn’t hold water, so to speak.”

Shelby, Ridgeway decline dissolution, will look at savings through highway

Photos by Tom Rivers – Shelby Town Supervisor Merle “Skip” Draper, center, said the town will look at assuming some of Medina’s non-emergency services to see how that would affect the tax rate for village residents and town residents outside the village. Town Board members William Bacon, left, and Steve Seitz were also at a joint session among Shelby, Ridgeway and Medina officials.

MEDINA – Before the Village of Medina makes a radical change and dissolves – a move that could shave $6 off the village’s tax rate – the towns of Shelby and Ridgeway believe they can find significant savings for the village with shared services.

Shelby Town Supervisor Skip Draper wants to see how much villagers could save if the two towns took over the village’s highway services. The village already pays twice for the service: to the village and then to either Ridgeway or Shelby.

Draper noted that the town of Yates plows the village of Lyndonville’s roads. He thinks a similar arrangement could work for the village of Medina, which sits about halfway in Shelby and halfway in Ridgeway.

Medina Mayor Andrew Meier reluctantly supported the shared service pursuit. Meier said the issue was brought up before during doomed shared services discussions about two years ago. Meier said a dissolution plan already gives village taxpayers the $6 savings and spells out how current village services would be provided by either the towns, or local development corporations.

About 50 residents attended the meeting at Shelby Town Hall to watch 15 elected officials talk about possibly sharing more services among two towns and the village of Medina.

But Ridgeway and Shelby officials say they won’t talk about dissolution. That angered Meier, who said a committee and consultants worked for nearly a year on the plan.
“There has been a concerted effort to ignore the plan,” Meier said at a joint meeting Monday evening among the three boards.

He asked the two towns to correct “false statements” they have made publicly about the plan.

“That’s your opinion,” Draper responded.

Napoli said the two towns weren’t asked to helped shape the plan.

“That is your plan,” Napoli told Meier. “We were not asked to be involved.”

Meier shared an email from July 2013 that Napoli sent to Scott Sittig, the lead consultant for the plan from the Center for Governmental Research in Rochester. Napoli told Sittig that Ridgeway would not cooperate with the study because “it was a waste of taxpayer money and a waste of Town of Ridgeway employees’ time.”

Meier told Napoli he “removed himself from this process.”

Meier was chided by a mediator, Richard Moffit, for pressing dissolution and Meier’s perceived slights from the towns.

“You can’t keep bringing up the past,” Moffit said.

The highway discussions represented a good start in potential tax savings, he said.

Medina Village Trustee Mike Sidari urged the three local boards to find some common ground. He is joined by Trustee Marguerite Sherman of Medina, Mayor Andrew Meier, left, and Richard Moffit, right, who served as mediator at Monday’s meeting.

Ridgeway and Shelby officials said they wanted to focus on shared services, which can provide immediate relief to taxpayers, rather than a drawn-out process with dissolution. That plan called for creating an LDC to manage some services, create an ambulance district, a debt district and pass other services, including police, to the towns. Draper said it could take years to establish the new taxing entities.

“We should look at everything rather than create LDCs and new layers of government,” he said.

Draper took command of the meeting at times, offering to crunch the numbers and work with Shelby Town Highway Superintendent Mike Fuller about how the town could take over some of the village highway costs.

Draper asked Meier to provide the village’s non-emergency budget for costs outside of police, fire and ambulance. Draper said emergency services account for about $10 of the village $16.45 tax rate. He expects the towns could bring down the other $6-plus of the village tax rate by assuming some of the non-emergency services.

Meier said he would have those budget figures, as well as the revenues for each service, to the two towns by the end of the week.

Draper said he would determine potential cost savings to the village and cost increase to Shelby by the next joint session, which was scheduled for 7 p.m. on Sept. 2.

Meier said the cost impacts have already been spelled out in the dissolution plan. He returned to that document several times during Monday’s hour-long meeting, but town officials wouldn’t discuss the plan in detail.

Mary Woodruff, a Ridgeway councilwoman, said the community isn’t ready for dissolution. The shared services discussions could better prepare the community and the boards for a dissolution and perhaps a merger of the two towns, she said.

One Medina, a group headed by local attorney Nathan Pace with support from Meier, favors dissolving the village and merging the two towns. But Woodruff said that is premature right now.

Town leaders also want to look at how water and sewer services are provided among the three governments and try to find ways to reduce administration and costs for that service.

A long-awaited joint session among the Medina, Ridgeway and Shelby boards occurred on Monday at the Shelby Town Hall.

Draper said the local government leaders will have their work cut out if they are to make a significant change in the tax burden for the village.

“That $6 won’t just disappear with a magic wand,” he said. “There’s work you have to do.”

Meier has pressed for dissolution because he said the current village government isn’t sustainable. The tax base tends to shrink every year as housing values fall. That puts pressure on the village to raise the tax rate. The $16.45 per $1,000 of assessed property is one of the highest in the region. Villagers then have the added burden of paying a $3.04 rate to Ridgeway and $3.35 to Shelby for a combined town-village rate of nearly $20.

“The elephant in the room is the $16.45,” Draper acknowledged.

Dissolution would shift some costs to the two towns. But even with dissolution residents outside the village would pay far less in taxes than the village property owners.

The Ridgeway residents outside the village currently pay a $6.71 rate for town, lighting and fire protection. That would rise 46 percent to $9.83 if the village dissolves and services are picked up according to the plan.

Shelby residents would see a 10 percent increase with dissolution with the current rate for outside-village residents going from $8.36 per $1,000 of assessed property to $9.17. That would raise taxes for a $70,000 home from $585 to $642.

Meier said he wants to compare the impact to outside-village residents with the shared service possibilities and the dissolution plan. The dissolution plan should receive support from the towns, Meier said, if it proves the best way to reduce village taxes while minimizing an increase to the towns, and still maintaining services in the community.

MEDINA – A joint session among the Medina Village Board and Town Boards for Shelby and Ridgeway will finally happen at 7 tonight at the Shelby Town Hall.

The meeting nearly didn’t happen after officials from the towns contested an agenda by Medina Mayor Andrew Meier. He wanted the village’s dissolution to be a topic but was rebuffed by Ridgeway Town Supervisor Brian Napoli and Shelby Town Supervisor Skip Draper.

The two town supervisors also insisted on an outside mediator and stenographer. The three governments will share the costs.

The bulk of the agenda will be geared to shared services among the three entities and perhaps some consolidation of functions. The meeting at 4062 Salt Works Rd. is open to public.