Some state Assembly members from communities most heavily damaged by flooding after Hurricane Irene have introduced a bill (A.8655) that would exclude “emergency expenditures … necessary as a result of damage to, or destruction of, a school building or school equipment” from the new property tax cap.
Think about it for a minute: you represent a small rural community, already saddled with very high effective property tax rates, in which a big chunk of the taxable property (not just the local school building) has been damaged or destroyed in a flood. It’s so bad that some property owners are packing up and leaving, while many of those remaining in the flood zones still aren’t sure if they can afford to rebuild, much less pay a school property tax bill that arrived in their mailboxes (or their banks’ mailboxes) a week after the flood hit. Barring an influx of special aid from the state, and even with the new tax cap in place, this means the undamaged property will be paying a significant tax hike to meet the levy target set before the flood. How in the world can you justify raising the levy even further under these circumstances?
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