“He has a one-track mind.” That’s an expression I used to hear frequently but less often these days. It has an earthiness lacking in more abstract terms such as “monomania” or “fixation.” A friend of mine hardly ever sends an email without mentioning the Italian burger offered up by the Green Front Restaurant in Canandaigua. It seems a bit accusatory to label him a monomaniac or to charge him with having a fixation. Saying that he has a one-track mind is a much friendlier tease. One might even call it more tasteful. That is, if one were into puns.
Italian burgers aside, I fear a personal tendency toward the “one-track mind” affliction. Recently my new car (Subaru Forester, base model) arrived at the dealership. While in the process of cleaning out my trade-in vehicle, fumbling under the driver’s seat for that final elusive Maxfli golf ball, I had the vaunted “aha” moment: the E-ZPass was still attached to the windshield!
As I struggled to remove the stubborn monitor, I was struck by the weirdest thought. Would I need to purchase a new E-ZPass, one recalibrated to the increased value of my vehicle? Would I now be charged more per mile of Thruway driving?
A vigorous final yank wrested the E-ZPass from the windshield, also catapulting the Maxfli from where I had placed it on the dashboard. The burst of commotion snapped me back to reality. I realized that I had momentarily become the victim of the one-track mind. My recent attention to property reassessment and attendant taxes had gotten the best of me. I understood full well that the Thruway Authority charges on the basis of services rendered rather than on the basis of a vehicle’s assessed value. Drive a Lexus or a Camry from Geneva to Amsterdam, the toll is the same. The property tax system, with its ever-menacing re-assessment arm, is (mercifully) a unique phenomenon. A phenomenon that had infected my fragile brain.
My long-dormant questioning of the property tax system was ignited back in 2010. At that time, certain physical changes attendant to the aging process necessitated that my wife and I either put an addition onto our current home or leave it. We chose the addition.
It seemed as if the contractor and crew had no sooner left the driveway on their final day of work than we received our congratulations from the city assessor in the form of a raised assessment. Which, despite what some may tell you, has occasioned 14 years of incremental increases in our property tax bills. The circumstances made me vividly aware of a bizarre system that penalizes a property owner for improving his/her property. Kind of like paying a higher Thruway toll when you purchase a new car.
Although just about everyone implores citizens to take more heed of local affairs, when that heed involves questioning of the status quo, it is generally either ignored or reflected back with the challenge to come up with a better plan. Which plan is all too often either ignored or met with the end-of-argument response that “our hands are tied.”
To the suggestion that all property tax exemptions be eliminated comes the retort that many are state-mandated and others are the exclusive purview of unelected Industrial Development Agencies. This is a curious shrug of the shoulders from people who would likely voice gratitude that we do not live in a country where “the state” dictates local policies and circumscribes individual property rights.
Eliminating property tax exemptions would broaden the tax base considerably, represent a meaningful move toward that “equitable” taxing system which is sold to property owners as the main reason for reassessment, and, significantly, encourage a whole new set of constituents to pay close attention to municipal and school budgets. Three positive outcomes.
One acknowledged virtue of the current property tax system is that it is a simple taxing mechanism. A concomitant flaw is that it is simplistic, or, to be blunt, thoughtless. However, like the state sales tax (instituted in 1965), the property tax, as currently in place, has taken on the aura of something handed down by the Lord on stone tablets. One questions it at one’s peril.
Starting with a clean sheet regarding exemptions, we might then consider borrowing from the California (of all places!) model. You first establish the base value of a property (as of today, let’s say). Reassessment does not occur until such time as the property is sold. Annual increases in taxable value and property tax rates are strictly limited to 1% or 2%. This enables property owners to plan their finances with more certainty. It encourages homeowners to stay in their homes and to make improvements, thus promoting the formation of stable, nurturing neighborhoods.
Our present abomination does absolutely nothing to incentivize staying in one’s home, and if anything, discourages home improvements. If one were asked to design a strategy for destabilizing residential neighborhoods, the current property tax system would be in line for an award.
Finding new and more sensible ways to fund municipal and public school services takes some energetic, outside-the-box thinking. It demands turning off the “auto-pilot,” daring to take a fresh look at a one-track system, worn perhaps to a rut, that has not changed with the times.
How difficult is it to change entrenched taxing systems? Well, in 1898, the U.S. government imposed a telephone tax on toll calls in order to help fund the Spanish-American War effort. The tax (oft repealed and reimposed) was finally removed from telephone bills in 2006. While the war lasted just eight months, the excise tax, in various reincarnations, survived for 108 years.
That’s the thing about taxes. Once in place they have a habit of hanging on, of growing, of being regarded as untouchable institutions. They give birth to agencies and offices and generations of people who have never known a world without them.
The thought is enough to make an Inquiring Taxpayer long for a cold PBR. And its fitting companion — an Italian burger.
Longtime Canandaigua resident Joe Nacca taught English at Finger Lakes Community College for 30 years.
GUEST APPEARANCE: Trying to get untracked
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20.04.2024
“He has a one-track mind.” That’s an expression I used to hear frequently but less often these days. It has an earthiness lacking in more abstract terms such as “monomania” or “fixation.” A friend of mine hardly ever sends an email without mentioning the Italian burger offered up by the Green Front Restaurant in Canandaigua. It seems a bit accusatory to label him a monomaniac or to charge him with having a fixation. Saying that he has a one-track mind is a much friendlier tease. One might even call it more tasteful. That is, if one were into puns.
Italian burgers aside, I fear a personal tendency toward the “one-track mind” affliction. Recently my new car (Subaru Forester, base model) arrived at the dealership. While in the process of cleaning out my trade-in vehicle, fumbling under the driver’s seat for that final elusive Maxfli golf ball, I had the vaunted “aha” moment: the E-ZPass was still attached to the windshield!
As I struggled to remove the stubborn monitor, I was struck by the weirdest thought. Would I need to purchase a new E-ZPass, one recalibrated to the increased value of my vehicle? Would I now be charged more per mile of Thruway driving?
A vigorous final yank wrested the E-ZPass from the windshield, also catapulting the Maxfli from where I had placed it on the dashboard. The burst of commotion snapped me back to reality. I realized that I had momentarily become the victim of the one-track mind. My recent attention to property reassessment and attendant taxes had gotten the best of me. I........
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