captions Language: en 2023 Webster Town board Workshop we have to say three agenda items tonight uh the first one is a presentation actually by Jared Jared hurt um regarding our current I don't know I guess it's slaying the helicopter a lot we have in town that's been around for 15 years so Jared I'm gonna hand the Baton to you 17 years five months and nine days okay well let's uh so um thank you my name is Jared hurt I'm with Evans Fox presentation tonight is I've handed out the packet to all the members of the board the objective is to repeal the aircraft airports in heliport Town law or otherwise amend the local law to provide the aggrieved residents with an Avenue to obtain a special use permit or some similar similar relief the issue is that as the law sits today there is an outright prohibition against Landing or taking off a helicopter and various other aircraft or having a heliport or airport within the town of Webster there is absolutely positively no Avenue for any Resident to seek any form of relief from that specific provision in the town code now what I've provided the members or board members with is now it's packet with various exhibits I just want to walk everyone through I figured that would be the most efficient way to do it exhibit a is really just a map of Monroe County there are 19 towns located within Monroe County not one town aside from Webster has an outright prohibition on a heliport or the takeoff or Landing of private helicopters within the town in fact 17 of the 19 towns in Monroe County don't even have the word helicopter or heliport within their town code so as previously mentioned this this code this law has been on the books now for about 17 and a half years and clearly no other Town within Monroe County has felt it necessary to enact any similar legislation exhibit B is a copy of the actual law itself for the members of the board which I really provided that for your convenience to to see that there is in fact no Avenue for any Resident to pursue any form of relief within the four corners of the code itself Exhibit C what I provided to everybody was there is a process through a special use permit process through the town board sections 269 18 through 269-27 of the Webster town code the point of me providing that is to to show evidence that there already is something in existence within the town code that allows the town board to a process for which to hear special use permits what we're really asking for is if the town board and its review of this law doesn't find it appropriate to repeal the law or amend it in some substantive way that they at least provide some mechanism for Relief and what I'm saying is that that process already exists we just need the town code as it pertains to helicopters and heliports to provide that Avenue so that we can Avail ourselves to go before the town board and seek a special use permit now again we're not asking for right now for the town board to Grant relief allowing this to happen if the town board says hey we're going to allow any applicant that feels they're aggrieve to come before the town board and seek a special use permit well then there's all sorts of of safeguards and mechanisms that the town board can review and they're already provided for within your own code to make sure that the applicant or the aggrieve party is meeting the requirements and the standards that you as the town board and the town code provide for along those lines what I provided were copies of the town code regarding the communications towers and solar energy and I did that because those are hot button issues in almost every town around the state um Communications Towers almost all towns have have really provided a special use permit process which you have and it's specifically provided within the sections of the town code as they pertain to Communications towers and the same thing with solar energy with the solar terms those those items are those types of Industries and development would otherwise be prohibited outright without having that mechanism for degree parties to go forward now really why we're all here right is because or at least why I'm here is because there's a property within the town of Webster that is like no other property and that property everything is set forth on exhibit D I provided a Google Earth photo of the property and the first one there's a black ax in the in the right hand corner of that photograph depicting the subject property that we're all talking about 893 through it Road and that photo depicts how unique this property is in the sense that it Bots 104 on one side it has the bay on the the far Northern side it sits on a huge parcel 27 and a half acres is controlled by the same landowner so it's such a unique parcel in the sense of being able to have it utilized as a heliport and for the takeoff and the landing of helicopter yet there's no mechanism no Avenue for him to go forward and seek relief from the code the next page that I have provided under that exhibit is is a printout of Monroe County and it's a reflection of the tax parcels and again it it's just a memorialize and show how unique this property is in the sense of there's a lot of Acres there 27.5 Acres that are controlled by this landowner data butts 104.
it abuts the Irondequoit Bay nobody else in the town of Webster can can present those same facts going forward in the photos that I provided there's just actual photos of the subject property the first one is just looking at the property from DeWitt Road the next one is looking down which shows the overpass for 104 which will bust the property the next one is the 104 itself which is what you see if you were to walk the property line and look through the fence and then the next photos I think are really telling which show what you see from this property when you look out the bat the vast land that is there and the fact that this individual resident can take off and land from this property without ever flying over anyone else's property he can leave the town of Webster without going over anyone else's property again I I don't know any other resident that that could state that but there's no relief for him to seek in the way that the code is currently written and lastly what I provided was exhibit e which is just further documentation that so the the flight once a once an aircraft is in the air is governed by the Federal Aviation Administration the FAA has approved this facility as a heliport now I throw that out to you and show you that because again I don't know any other property in the town of Webster that can make that statement so I would like to thank the members of the board for their time and if there's any questions I'd be glad to answer it again we're just asking for your kind consideration in looking at the code in this particular provision like I said is 17 and a half years old and there's no relief for the residents to to seek to you as the board to say hey I I need some relief I'm an agree of party how can I do this it doesn't exist there any questions from any member of the board all right supervisor yeah Jared it just it's kind of a combination comment question uh the handout that you brought in for everybody yes uh we will be uploading this to our website and to our social media platforms like we upload all the presentations we do yes at uh so that'll be up there for for everybody to see and and also the tape of this for anybody not watching live at home or in the audience um your last exhibit and I appreciate this is uh it's going back almost 20 years ago is this the the property uh on DeWitt or is this in the Bluffs an old property that uh it is the property on DeWitt that is still current huh okay and I know it you know it obviously it expired in January about seven yeah it's been renewed ever since my point of showing you that exhibit was that that's been in existence now for 18 years thanks I don't mean to nitpick and obviously tonight is presentation purposes only there is no you know I mean if we went forward with anything uh on this and and Charlie I'll defer to you and using Jared's uh repeal amend special use permit any one of those Avenues in the future I'm guessing would have public hearing aspects writing up what the proposal is all that stuff so there would be a change in law yes right now uh and I don't mean to nitpick tonight but I I mean how can I I can't tell this is Sundance Trail this last two pages I mean like I said Jared this is going to be up there for the world to see so tell me on these two pages how I can see that this is the site where is the tax ID number the DeWitt DeWitt h042 if you look at the facility name do with each okay so if you look under the and again just Tom this is almost wholly irrelevant to anything the town has to do but with that being said the if you look at the facility name on the first page in the uh call it a quarter of the way down see where it says proposal Associated City facility name yeah the DeWitt H whatever that Bluffs which I know Sundance Trail was in the block so so was this for two locations yes at the time but it's only 893 duet currently gotcha okay so and that's just to establish and and to to show to the board that the FAA who governs the the flight pass in the flights of aircraft has approved this facility but that doesn't mean that this is binding on the town I'm not saying that I'm pretty I'm just showing you his further Evidence as to how unique this particular parcel is that that's the point of showing that and yet we have this unique parcel that by all accounts our position is should be able to be utilized and there's no there's no ability for us to seek any relief given the current code so I can't emphasize that enough we're not asking the town board right now to Grant any relief I mean what you indicated time to be sure if there's any change to the town code subject to a public hearing and at that point in time we have a whole presentation which gets into a lot of different other facts but for purposes of tonight the goal and the objective was to try to stimulate the Tom Borden to saying hey and thinking this code's been out there now for 17 and a half years we have at least one degree of Resident perhaps more who don't have an Avenue to get any relief that's not that's not fair okay um any other no Jenny appreciate you coming in yeah thank you any other questions comments concerns have done thanks Jared thank you all right appreciate it I'll keep it quick so you can watch the game all right so actually Matthew we're a little ahead of schedule um next up is an update from the Webster Economic Development Alliance executive uh director Matt Chatfield on the activities going on at the alliance is this Mike Mike working perfect good great yep I'm curious does the board mind if I stay seated no no it's fine okay foreign so thank you very much for having me here today just a quick review overview of Wida it is the public-private partnership for economic development within the community five key members Town Village School District Chamber of Commerce in the business improvement district created the organization back in 2014 and the overall strategic focus of the organization is what we call the four r's resources relationships retention and recruitment those are the things that we focus on on a regular basis as well as you know strategic projects within the community so I'm going to give a quick update on some of the Strategic projects we have currently taking place both within the town in the village I think also understanding what's going on in the village is good context for the town board to understand is we're all one community and we all tend to try and work together towards common goals um over the past several years we've had quite a bit of success as a partnership over 10 million dollars of funds have come in to the community mostly in the form of Grant funds uh and that amounts to about 18.74 cents for every dollar that's been contributed to the organization itself from the five members so our return on investment as a community is very good uh from an economic development perspective and uh we continue uh to seek uh funds and bring those funds within the into the community some of the key projects that are on the map in front of you include uh Sandbar park that is a signature project within a town of Webster uh the project itself is largely um the product of efforts from the alliance to be as Frank as possible the alliance brought in the original 118 000 for design and Engineering back in 2015 and then that resulted in additional funds being brought in for construction and currently we stand at about 4.6 million dollars of Grant funds in the door for a projected 11 million dollar project of which phase one was roughly eight eight million dollars I believe and as we actually we're gonna look at that one a little bit more in particular funding secured the date 4.6 million dollars on Sandbar and where do we stand on that project what's next um if the town needs to continue on with phase two of the project it's the Environmental Education area uh right now roughly 1.6 to 1.8 million dollars projected for that project as of right now um but it still needs to go through the final design process so next steps for the town would be to hire uh professional designers Engineers Landscape Architects to finalize the design and come up with a final cost estimate that project is being done in conjunction uh in partnership with the school district there are funds earmarked uh from the sale of the basket Road Stadium facility roughly 324 thousand dollars plus or minus and that has been earmarked towards the Environmental Education area so there's already a small chunk of funds that we believe would go towards that project development of an advisory committee on how we can have a better Town School relationship for the programming and of that facility and potentially the operation of it and then of course additionally at Sandbar Park is the future of a potential restaurant facility on that on that property in the future of that is to be decided I believe sometime probably in the next calendar year West Webster Hamlet is another Focus area of the Webster Economic Development Alliance and it has been a focus of the Town board for quite a significant amount of time over the past several years I would say where we stand now is we've secured funding and have finalized a master plan for that project the overall study was a hundred thousand dollars and Josh artuso gave you an update on that project uh I would say five to six weeks ago and truly the next steps on that are to finalize coordination with Monroe County on the future of 600 Ridge Road so we're diligently working with the town to try and identify a path forward to both mitigate the issues there and bring that project and that property back onto the tax rolls and being a positively contributing positively to the town of Webster and the hamlet in particular and there are some zoning recommendations as well as some code enforcement recommendations that were made as part of that study so those would be next steps for the town board if they wanted to continue on the path towards implementation of that master plan for the Hamlet and then of course it's my responsibility to go out and continue to try and identify sources of funding to implement all these wonderful ideas moving West moving or excuse me moving Eastward we have quite a substantial amount of time and effort over the past I would say nine years and counting in a coordination effort with the Xerox corporation on the future of its campus as we all know there are several portions of the campus sizable portions that have been deactivated there's empty buildings vacant land and Xerox is a corporation has decided to come to the table and be a partner in the future planning and revitalization of its campus and they are a partner within a master planning process that is being led by the village Village was awarded 203 thousand dollars in funds from the Department of State and we are currently undertaking a master planning effort for that area in yellow the boundary box that does cross into the town of Webster it includes the town's Recreation Center some lands along Phillips Road um the supervisor has and Josh artuso have both been um and both are continue to be a part of the advisory committee for this project and this is a master planning effort so this is not a um a hard Capital construction project yet the goal is how do we identify the Future Vision for this where does it fit within the community how do we go about uh understanding the potential ramifications for changes in land use in this area as well as development intensity and understanding how they impact all all things uh even related to transportation as well so there's there's a host of issues that we're hoping to provide recommendations for that come out of this including land use changes development intensity uh Transportation recommendations and some general public policy recommendations as well next steps for that project are the Consultants will prepare and finalize that Master Plan hopefully to be done by the end of this calendar year Wida is also in the process of identifying a list of Usual Suspects likely developers and investors to invite to a forum it'll be an invite-only form on the prospects of development investment in this location as part of this master planning effort we have conducted a market analysis we've hired economists and economic development specialists and real estate Specialists to conduct an economic analysis and one of the findings is that this area could support a thousand housing units over the next five years new housing units approximately 40 percent of rental units and sixty percent owner occupied um so there is a driving market for housing within the study area and part of the master planning process is to identify are there any appropriate areas that could be converted to a residential use or are there areas that should just remain industrial so that's part of that Master planning effort also in the village downtown revitalization continues to be a primary goal of what we hope to accomplish within the Webster Economic Development Alliance if we go back eight years to 2015 the alliance was uh successful in obtaining private monies from cobank from The Weather Channel from Xerox Corporation from Frontier Communications we obtained about fifty thousand dollars in private money and we generated a community investment strategy it was like the the alliances version of the town's comprehensive plan mostly on private investment where should we be investing in our community the three this six real big topic areas the top the top Focus area within the community based on six months of public Outreach was downtime revitalization the residents across the town in the village wanted to see a revitalized Village Center the second most important area was a revitalized waterfront third most important topic area was a productive open space and recreational resources for families and then after that an industrial center that will create jobs and Economic Opportunity so since 2015 I would say that we've been largely ticking those things off off of that list we've been focusing on downtown revitalization we've been focusing on Waterfront revitalization we've been focusing on Industrial Development and we've been focusing on Parks Recreation and those Community Development Services that make Webster a great place to live um moving forward for downtown revitalization there is a grant opportunity for the village currently New York State has created a 4.5 million dollar program where if a community devises a strategy for private and public investment these are actually investment dollars if you come up with a good enough plan and they like it they will help fund it last year we submitted an application on behalf of the village in a small area it was mostly on Main Street and we made it to the finals we're actually one of the final eight they selected three communities for awards but we made it to the final eight for interviews so we have a very good chance this year so we are revising our application as we speak that will be submitted on the 29th of September so the notice of award for that those funds would likely come back in 24 2024.
and where this aligns with that prior project that reimagined Webster project is that it overlaps so now we're talking about implementation dollars for recommendations that were currently just finalizing within the master planning process so we're really trying to almost take on projects two projects at multiple levels simultaneously but aligning ourselves to really make things happen sooner rather than later another project right the list just keeps going on and on we have a lot going on within the Webster Economic Development Alliance the Community Access Project at Xerox we've been talking about this one for several years now in coordination with Xerox the village of Webster is exploring taking public dedication of some private roads currently we have about 1.838 million dollars towards the rehabilitation of those of those roadways prior to them or just after them entering into the public domain um it would be foolish on behalf of the private the public sector to take private roads that are in massive uh states of disrepair and then rely on the very local small delegation of 5 000 residents in the village of Webster to rehab them on behalf of the major corporation in the community it doesn't make sense we all agree on that we're just trying to identify a path forward if we can make this happen right if we can bring these roads into public domain and help facilitate development in a of the private sector for a major Redevelopment site in Webster there's an 88 Acre Site directly across the street from the Webster Recreation Center that is the focus of that reimagined Webster initiative that 203 thousand dollar Master planning effort so there's a lot of time effort and resources going into the future of this small portion of our community but we feel that it is a what we call a catalytic opportunity right this is a catalyst for future private development so we're still awaiting potential matching funds from the federal government we requested four million dollars we have been given a a preliminary anticipation that an award of five hundred thousand dollars could be awarded from the federal government but that all is pending on federal legislation and we're continuing to work together the town The Village Wida and Xerox with Monroe County because Monroe county is also planning on undertaking massive improvements to Phillips Road which goes right through this whole Master planning effort so we've had multiple meetings talking about the future of that Corridor and how it relates to the future of this portion of our community and I'm going to end with a bigger picture right we have two more a couple more maybe two more slides here to talk about what the bigger picture of what's going on in the industrial portions of our community many years ago I I coined the term the Northeast area for technology neat our neat Zone it's a 1500 acre plus or minus industrial Zone within our community crosses both the town and Village boundary it extends largely from Route 250 at the very Southwestern extent in the village and continues all the way to our Fair life project essentially just east or just west of County Line Road that is the industrial Zone within our community but currently that industrial zone is bisected there's really two separate zones there's a yellow box that mostly focuses on basket Road and then there's the green zone which focuses mostly on what we would consider the Xerox campus right the Xerox campus that extends mostly between Phillips and salt roads with some appendages on either side these areas are although it's all zoned uniformly these areas are distinct they cannot be they are not connected via any sort of infrastructure uh Transportation infrastructure other than route 104.
so the vision the larger vision is to create a unified Transportation corridor from Route 250 to basket Road utilizing almost entirely roads that are currently in existence today Mitchell Dean the largest extent of which is currently private I think the long-range goal would be for that to be rehabilitated and brought into the public domain and the actual com to make this Vision come to fruition there are two small extension projects um one on the west that would bring Chayo to drive and a new Gateway into the town's Recreation Center out to route 250. currently on land owned by the town and a small extension of boulter Industrial Parkway West to Salt Road that project we've heard a lot about recently um because the uh Fairlife project itself has made that a small connection more timely right now the time the time is more of the essence to see if we can bring that that connection to fruition a lot of this slide just talks about the infrastructure that's going on in basketball Road Corridor everybody's very familiar with what's going on in this Corridor but I would like to point out that the Investments that are taking place within the public infrastructure of this Corridor are not merely focused on One Singular project these Investments will go a long way towards making this entire basket and salt Road area much more viable for long-term Economic Development the the fair life project is a wonderful Standalone project within our community and yes there will be some infrastructure that that will be upgraded because of it but it will not be only to the benefit in the long run of just the fair life project I think we have a large 85 Acre Site currently owned by Xerox we have a 20 Acre Site owned by paychecks we have project property that's currently owned by Tessie Corporation we have a lot of Economic Opportunity in this area and what we are undertaking now is planning for the future just to determine how much of that opportunity we can bring into reality just a quick understanding of that boulter Parkway and Industrial extension you know brings that road right through some Xerox lands we are currently identifying a path forward with Xerox on how we can make that a reality so then what's the next on that particular roadway extension project well the next steps would be for the town to hire a design engineer the town and the school to finalize that transfer process because there's also lands of the school district that would be involved surveying the corridor is part of the design process and lastly it is the economic development alliance's intention very soon to submit funding to support the engineering and the survey components of that project so all of those soft cost efforts of part one of a longer term process our goal is to submit a request to the state to fund those costs and lastly I'm ending on the big picture right we started off small we talked about a lot of singular projects but it's always good to take that step back and really understand how all of this connects and works together over the past several years our neat Zone this northeast area for technology has identified several large areas for Economic Opportunity within our community we have them numbered one through seven on here sites ranging from 88 acres to 43 acres to 120 Acres right they run the gamut of potential projects for investment um a good portion of them are owned by Xerox Corporation and it is the continued partnership with Xerox corporation that will hopefully allow us to continue to submit these projects for large site selectors within the community similar to that we did for Fairlife working with our partners at the Greater Rochester Enterprise to bring large-scale investment and job creation into our community so with that I will open it up to questions from the board Matt how many people are on staff at WETA the staff of weeda consists of one executive director did you sleep at night I wake up often in the middle of the night thinking about things yes this is a tremendous undertaking yeah so there's a lot going on but it's and it's largely because there's a lot of opportunity within our community and it it would be foolish for us to sit back and not at least explore these opportunities because there's there really is you know it's it's Unique nice work good work in putting this together because you've shown I mean anybody wants to now can see exactly what's going on and and the reasons and the reasons we are basically one pamphlet and the reasons we're undertaking what what we're doing you know it's very it's a very there's a very coherent process here there's just not enough staff resources to waste time on projects we we've identified the big ones yeah good great work good job it goes back to the old case for business days at the Webster Congressman it absolutely does when we created those Master plans if you will but now what you've done is taken it to to action actionable steps and uh it's great good work is it it's not so much a question as a comment because uh since I am one of the board members of Wida uh and actually the last I think 20 months I've been the president of the board those 20 months has been that's a difference of a relationship between Matt and myself him as the executive director and the president and especially in the last couple of months as we try to get together in the morning before the work day starts to talk about Wida specific things how to maybe grow it to your point one employee you know this and that the problem that Matt and I run into at those meetings is that there's so much going on that we tend to start talking granularly about these projects we look up an hour and 15 minutes has gone by and we really haven't talked about Wida and what we're trying to do with structure so that I'm sure can you imagine that yeah and I got to take the blame for that one Charlie okay well I don't know I don't let my toast get cold I let maybe your time's eggs get cold but I but it just I mean he's there is so many things going on here um and it's great to see the progression through the years um that you've accomplished and wheat is accomplished also now I remember 2013 Village of Webster that was that was pretty huge so you know every year you're building upon the previous year's success so you know congratulations this puts everything together in one place it really does somebody wanted to come in was totally right familiar what's going on in Webster here it is go through this thing in an hour and and see exactly how what's going on where it's going yeah this is uh it's a good piece of work great and of course congratulations to you for all the money you've raised and everything else it's that goes around saying but this this in particular is a good presentation grants follow the good projects all right it was nice to see at the Farmers Market on Wednesday it was a couple weeks ago I'm glad you had that booth there and there were a number of people that stopped over and asked a lot of very very good questions including myself and um you know thank you for for being there absolutely thanks man wonderful thank you hi thank you Matt good job man and Donna we're three minutes ahead of schedule well our last item of the night is the Webster assessor to the Stars to Anna Komar uh and some uh well some things that we've heard about last year um well I'll handle the Baton to you yes sir what did you want to say no I mean these items you're going to talk about we we did talk about last year actually one of them the fire the fire volunteers we voted on but it's a fluid world and there's changes and here you are to explain to us yeah okay so I guess I have a PDF in front of me I don't know how it looks on the screen I could pull up the PowerPoint it would be larger can can everyone see it all right yeah okay all right we'll go we'll rock and roll with this um thank you for having me I wanted to uh refresh things because you know we we were here recently to talk about legislative changes to an exemption being made available in Monroe County only for volunteer firefighters and ambulance workers this one I have tagged take two like in Hollywood because we get to do it again so soon this is going to be my topic at the fall conference because now this is Statewide so um my presentation to you this evening is that we have a current law per state statute real property tax law 466-k which was specific to Monroe County municipalities at local option and Webster did adopt that option in February 28 2022.
that allows a 10 exemption for the primary residents of certain volunteers for fire and ambulance and they must have at least two years of service live within the municipality that is served by the district for which they serve the service duration is certified by the district for which they serve and we also adopted a lifetime exemption option back in February of 22. that is 20 or more years of service will be honored if the the service was somewhere in Monroe County so if someone moves from another municipality has 20 or more years of service what Webster is saying is we'll welcome you to our community and continue to provide you with that exemption because we are offering the lifetime exemption if they're under 20 years they must live here and serve here but let's just say somebody wanted to move from another part of Monroe County into Webster and they already had 20 years of experience we would honor that exemption and continue it for them now that they are becoming a Monroe County res or a Webster Town resident sorry can I ask a question sure absolutely said we'll be honored if the service was in Monroe County that's what I'm saying yep okay so you have to get to 20 or more years before its service outside of the municipality and the district for which they serve okay okay so a Northeast joint fire district firefighter who's a volunteer who lives in the town of Webster would be able to live anywhere in the town of Webster not necessarily in the Northeast joint fire district and get the exemption that you prove 10 percent because Northeast joint fire district serves the municipality of Webster so we offer that to that service person the volunteer okay if there was somebody who was working for another municipality I don't know where all the volunteer firefighters are but let's just say Chai Lai okay and they have 20 years or more of experience there in service but then they want to retire and they want to move to Webster if they have 20 years experience in Chile we will honor that here in Webster that's what you approved but not if they were in Wayne County not if they're in Wayne County that's that's where I was going okay okay yep another part of the county is what I was trying to say so the legislation now what is happening is that there's a new statute and it's real property tax law 466-a and right now there are actually two uh readings of that one is in existence from being the original volunteer firefighters and ambulance workers exemption but what has happened is over time these exemptions have been written one or two counties at a time and uh there are 11 existing similar but not identical sort of exemptions for firefighters and ambulance workers that are volunteering their time to serve their community on December 9th of 2025 it was signed by the governor that there should be one and what happens is all of those 11 existing similar statutes one of what one of which is part K hours for Monroe County will be repealed it's going to disappear and unless the town board does something and unless Monroe County and whoever else has already approved it uh the actually the fire district has to approve it as well to offer a discount on their tax line on the bill the taxing um the the exemptions will disappear and so I'm here to ask you to continue it forward I know 2025 seems like a long time away but I'm gonna get to why I'm asking you now so if the taxing jurisdictions do nothing before that repeal date the exemptions will cease it will replace all those existing exemptions that now served 20 counties with one common language Statewide for all 62 counties in New York state it requires the same action taken by the taxing jurisdictions as recently done we did that last February to conform to the new state statute the new legislation reads this way you're going to see it looks very very familiar allows up to 10 percent for primary residence the key word there is up to because some of those were not offering 10 percent ours was offered at 10 percent no options you had to take the 10 or not approve the exemption others of those 11 other statutes read five percent so now the new statute reads up to 10 percent technically you have an option to reduce that 10 percent because the new statute does read up to 10 exemption uh and again the same thing for the years of service I would just call your attention to the minimum years now or somewhere between two and five and again that comes from historically the other exemptions that have been approved under different statutes that were not available in Monroe County varied on how many years of minimum service you needed by the time they got around to writing the one for Monroe County it was it was given to us as minimum two-year service you must live in the municipality that is served by the district for which they serve the service duration is certified by the district for which they serve all that's very similar very exactly the same actually it provides for Lifetime exemption option at local option which you have already adopted the new part is below it provides an additional provision for continuation of an exemption to an unremarried spouse of a member with at least five years of service that is killed in the line of duty in this capacity as a volunteer firefighter or ambulance worker that is a local option so that is something that you will need to consider new and afresh and that is to continue a benefit they must already be receiving the exemption and it would go to the spouse as long as that spouse is unremarried if the volunteer is killed in the line of duty the second provision that would be new that you need to apply some thought to is that it would provide an additional provision for again continuation of an exemption under different circumstances it would be to the unremarried spouse of a member with at least 20 years of service again you would need to approve that provision if you so desire any questions on the difference between the two laws right so here's an update in why I'm here today on May 9 2023 Monroe County adopted that new language to replace their portion of the real property tax law 466k specific so now the assessor's office will be administering 466a for County purposes it'll be easier for all of our residents the people receiving these exemptions and such if all the rules were the same they preserved their option for Lifetime exemption which was exactly the same that you have you have offered and they also adopted the two unremarried spouse Provisions to continue benefits under those circumstances so your options today but today it's a discussion so today I'm asking you if you would like to consider it further to set a public hearing your options are by March 1st of 2024 of course you can do nothing if you do nothing I suggest that you do revisit it before the expiration date but you don't have to do anything today second option is to review the options and adopt the new language to preserve the existing exemptions and or offer those new options or you can revisit the whole thing at a future meeting and again I would recommend that you do it before it expires on December 9th of 2025.
if you don't do anything for the same assessment role that the Monroe County has already adopted theirs it just becomes a little bit difficult to explain to people why they might get a provision that the county offers that we don't offer I suggest that it would be a minimal impact because it would be for the unremarried surviving spouse otherwise it conforms exactly the same as the other I would anticipate that you would leave the exemption level at 10 percent in the minimum years at two as it's already been adopted the question is for the unremarried spouses so it's not urgent except for the one or two people that might apply to I can think of one any questions I can answer no you did a great job in explaining it thank you do you want to roll right into the two new ones do you want to take a resolution and continue this thought is that what you're saying well I think I have two other exemptions to discuss with you now when you get to our options number two review the options that would be if we you know let's do a public hearing and let's get this new law put in now I don't have any problems with that because I have a lot of reasons I don't have any problems with it does anybody have a problem with us moving forward with this now and do you want the pub the public hearing notice has to be in the paper like five days minimum before so we'd put it in the Webster Herald let's say for the Wednesday the 20th we would do the public hearing at the 28th but that's a workshop that would be entirely up to the board and I don't have a problem with doing it at a workshop does the board have a problem doing it at a workshop the public hearing on this doesn't sound like they do all right well in that case can I make a motion to set a public hearing concerning legislative changes to the volunteer firefighters and ambulance workers exemption rptl466a and to have that public hearing notice advertised in the Webster Heralds Wednesday September 20th 2023 Edition in the public hearing to be held on Thursday September 28th at 5 30 p.m in the Webster Town board meeting room that is my motion second should we buy the Flaherty I councilman Cahill guitar all right thank you moving along yeah that was the easy one that was the easy one okay all right so so I've been here a couple of times this is going to be I think the third time in in 12 months to discuss the senior citizens exemption which is not star so I call that 467.
that's the statute from which it is derived um there's an income portion to that exemption and it usually mirrors and this time it still is mirroring the same definition of exemption for or for income excuse me for disabled persons with limited income and that's real property tax law 459c for all the attorneys watching today um so here's but before I go into why I'm here for the new thing let me just remind you I was here in September 8th of 22 and also January 12th and we discussed the option to adjust the income limits for two exemptions I believe there was a full board at that time so we talked a lot about the limits there's a sliding scale that's available that is not today's discussion but the board did not take any action on it at that time uh keep in the back of your minds and I will I will draw a conclusion later I'm just leaving the breadcrumbs right now that is something that you still can entertain uh we talked about the limited income senior citizen not to be confused with stars and the disabled persons with limited income we review those basic qualifications for each of those programs you can refer to those dates um on the town's website for those Town board meeting dates if you would like to refresh your memory at home we reviewed the board's authority to set the income limitations for Town purposes within the limitations that are found in the statutes that has not changed the statute is the same we also discussed the effects of the increase of the income level we did a little speculating at that time we talked about the difficulty predicting that impact on taxable value and tax rate we now have data and that's why I wanted to refresh back onto this topic just ever so slightly the beginning of this presentation it does require separate and distinct public hearings to amend the existing laws because even though the statutes mirror they are separate statutes so separate and distinct public hearings are needed when we address these topics even though I often talk about them at the same time results from the 2023 role you may recall we have five deciding tax jurisdictions found on the Webster assessment role for these two exemptions Monroe County adopted on January 10th of last year the New State Maximum of 58 400 on their income limit sliding scale the other four took no action at that time and I told you that I would come back and give you an idea of what the impact was from when the county increased their limits and here it is the results are that Monroe County increased their income increase their maximum income from thirty seven thousand four hundred to fifty eight thousand four hundred which is the state's maximum allowed by the statute the town's current maximum is at thirty four thousand four hundred they received 243 new approvals above and beyond the prior year some of that might be attributable to people becoming age eligible that were not previously age eligible but in conjunction with that they raise the income limits I'm just telling you the difference between the two role years at a 17 million eight hundred and nineteen thousand eight hundred thirty six assessment being taken off of the taxable part of the role and push to other taxpayers that's an assessment so you can apply a tax rate to that full value that would translate to about 30 million it's a very generous program so how did I come up with that number here's a little bit of a history can you see my mouse when I when I roll over this okay great this is a four-year analysis of the exemptions that were granted I'm looking at role year 2020 2021 22 and 23.
now people might say but you're in 23. yes that's the one that we just finished up in July and the calendar year does not follow the assessment role year the income year is at the top in red and that lags by two years from the role year so in 2020 we were looking at income from 2018 and if you follow across the top line You'll see that the county had approved the number of exemptions we approved 536 at that time and the exempt value for assessment terms at that time was 26 million at the round numbers in 2021 we were looking at the 19 income and we had 550 that's typical to increase because our our people are aging into the program people do move and people do pass away so there's always the pluses and minus just like your home checkbook that was 37 million at the time in 2022 assessment role we're looking at the 2020 income that was a time when people were home there was uh the incentive programs for staying at home there was an extra benefit given for unemployment Etc it's a few years ago we may recall that what we saw was a huge increase in people's income even in the senior citizen population and the numbers dropped to 450 and the value that was being Exempted dropped to 22 million then on the 2023 role even though we're looking at the 2021 still coveted income year the county increased their limits from 37 4 to 58 for and we improve we approved 693 applications up from 450 the prior year with 40 million that's a difference of the blue lines with the smaller numbers Compares that year to the prior year so you see the increase of 14 the decrease of 100 and then the jump again to 243.
that's on the county line if you'd like to jump down you can see the Town Line just one line below that and we did not have that experience because you did not change the income limits I think that you'll find as the presentation goes on that was a crystal ball moment because the new definition by its own definition of what it's including and no longer including in the definition of income is in effect raising the income limit and more people will qualify you have any questions at this point for the History part I so in the town at 394 approved exemptions in 2023 for 17 million at our current Equalization rate okay maybe it's later in the presentation if we had we're at 34 000 as our cap if we had gone to that 58 000 oh boy do you think that we would have had 700 approvals in this 17 million would have been at our Equalization rate 40 or 50 million likely yes okay our increase and our difference in taxable value going from a prior of a lower than the county to the full maximum would have been a greater differential actually yes yep okay because they if I go back to this slide they started at 37 for we were 3 000 below that so you'd have that Gap to make up as well yeah this slide is for you Tom I know you like numbers well I mean you know what our Equalization rate there's 3.6 billion dollars or whatever this is yeah down at the bottom I put the roles taxable thank you for pointing that out you know every 36 million that you exempt at one percent it doesn't lower the tax levy by one percent it pushes it out to the rest of the taxpayers right and if you have a large enough shift it actually changes the tax rate yep yeah gotcha so the that number at the bottom the role a set AV AV is my abbreviation for assessed value it takes up less space on the screen um not taxable that's just the value on the roll I didn't report the task looks I didn't want to confuse you because for each line that you see above there there's a different taxable value because everybody gets to shape their exemptions the way that they like to shape it and there are certain things that apply to the town that might not apply to the school and vice versa star doesn't apply to the town veterans exemptions don't apply to the school so it all adds up differently by the end of the the day on that last page of the role it's all adding up differently so one reminder then about your income limits your options for 2024 and again in order to be on the 2024 assessment role that decision must be made and finalized by March 1st of 2024 you can do nothing you can lower that value on your 50 you get to decide the 50 and the rest gets calculated after it and um you can raise it or you can revisit the question in future years here's a reminder of what that sliding scale currently looks like you have approved that 26 000 for your maximum of 50 exemption there's no greater exemption than 50 percent and the state limit right now is 50 000 at that level and and then you can see how the scale plays out you don't get to choose each of these steps up to the high number and I was reporting the highest number to make it easier for people at home to try and think what this shite they should apply and not apply uh 58 000 of what I was reporting and the 34 4 is what I'm reporting we always tell them the upper limit but you have to decide the 50 limit to get there that makes sense this is um my report to you back in January of what the other towns were planning to do at that time and most of them decided just to sit tight for a little while and as it turns out with this definition now coming down that you don't have an option of adopting a new definition but you have some options among that new definition that we need to discuss so the opportunity before you is to review those limits and also to accept the new mandated limit or a definition excuse me I'm trying to make that distinction to accept the new mandated income definition or to review and that next word should be adopt options in the new definition of income so and what you want to do is make sure that it's appropriate for your demographics um I have the presentation if you need it I'm sure it's on the website for the dates that I put at the beginning of the presentation we'd study the demographics we studied the census and we talked about the difficult decision before the board right now which is that every time you approve an exemption for a particular class of property the other people who are not part of that class will be making up the different stat and the taxes the town does not go without any taxes the county would not go without any of those taxes it's just that you're going to collect it from someone else sometimes that difference be from a prior decision and a new decision such as when the when the county adopted that and it went up that 17.8 million um sometimes that can actually affect the party that you're trying to provide the benefit for because it might shift the tax rate a little bit if it's sizable enough when you have a three billion dollar assessment role it takes a big push to push the needle on the tax rate there is no way for me to predict that for you because it's so parcel level specific there is no ceiling on the senior citizens or the disabled income person like there is on the veterans exemption a 50 exemption of a one million dollar house is 50 you will they will receive 500 000 non-taxed a 50 percent exemption on a two hundred thousand dollar house will be a hundred thousand exempt they each get their bill cut in half there's no limit on it New York State assessors has advocated for a limit so the legislative changes are you ready to dive in the old definition was cumbersome for both the applicant and the staff it was confusing to the applicant it was difficult to explain and to administer and it burdened it was very burdened with documented evidence it was originated in the 60s and it was band-aided together with all the new ways that the the state and the federal government allowed for people to start to re to save for their own retirements IRAs have been invented since then stocks have changed since then there's just so much that has happened in the American Financial world since then I think it's it's time for an overhaul and their intent was was good all right let's see what let's see how this turned out the new definition is fresh and it's relatable it's easier to understand but make no mistake it is not simplistic it is easier to administer so they tell us but we have a lot of questions yet left unanswered by the office of real property and Department of Taxation and Finance who are the ones responsible for helping us administer this new legislation it does reduce the documented evidence for most income tax filers the old definition did not follow income tax guidelines in fact that was the most lengthy conversations we would have with a lot of people they'd say but that's not taxable income we're not here to file your your income tax returns we're trying to process an exemption application based on income and that definition is found in real property tax law and a lot of opinions over the decades so it did not follow those tax guidelines it was hard for people to who are trying to apply for the program to relate to why we needed the information and it felt invasive not fun on our end but you know we help them through all those all those uh applications it included all available income resources to a household it included non-taxable income such as veterans disability payments railroads Social Security equivalents and railroad pensions workers compensation earnings on your IRA accounts so what you don't give the tax man on your IRA you just you know you just tell them the 1099 and here's my distribution if I took one that's what you would give the income tax person to help you prepare your return or the document you'd be looking at if you file your own return we're asking for the opposite we were always asking them to give us through year-end statement of the Investments held in an IRA because we were looking for interest dividends and capital gains and inevitably they were going back and forth and back and forth it also included contributions from additional residents in the household because there was an opinion that decided that if you had an adult child living in your home and they're making contributions to the household that was income to the senior citizen it was difficult to explain it was difficult to gain the support of the applicant it also omitted appreciation from the income tax return so when someone was filing an income tax return our office was charged with restructuring that income tax return asking for documents that weren't part of that tax return before we could arrive at a conclusion of what is your income for the purposes of this exemption the changes the new and I'm going to refer to this as the basic mandated definition the one that you don't have any choice on is the new basic mandated definition in the slide it allows localities to adjust not only the income limits but it also allows you the definition of income to reflect their communities because beyond the basic definition they're going to give you some options but within the basic it intends to simplify the process for everyone one option that they're offering you however defies that principle they will submit completed application proof of their age and their residency and their federal tax return and all the 1099s and their schedule 1 if they file it sounds simple or if you don't file an income tax return the state has offered a worksheet and you would file the renewal application and your proof of age and your residency along with income worksheet and your 1099s because they don't file the income tax return it follows federal income tax purposes it does not look for income that is not found on the income tax return but one option defies that principle the new basic mandate definition begins with a federal adjusted gross income that number is found on both your state and your federal return it adds into that non-taxable interest in dividends as found on that tax return line 2A it includes full Social Security benefits versus the taxable Social Security benefits previously we were always including the full Social Security benefits so that is consistent it excludes the IRA distributions that also is consistent we never looked at the distributions but we were charged with finding how much that account had grown whether or not they had taken it and then what it does is it limits the losses that are claimed on the income tax return for income tax purposes that paragraph alone is complicated the most simple way that I can explain it to you and this is not an option for us there are several categories of loss you can have capital gain loss you can have a business loss you can have a farm loss there are several categories of loss no one category of loss can exceed three thousand dollars and the sum of those losses cannot exceed fifteen thousand dollars now the assessor's office needs to understand how to find losses on the federal income tax return and make sure that each one is limited the new definition provides flexibility with the local options have I confused you yet until yes these were written by lawyers yes or an account all right [Laughter] the legislative definition of income start the starting point is the federal adjusted gross income adjustments are possible and two are non-negotiable as I mentioned those two are including the tax-exempt interest or dividends found online 2A of your federal 1040 form and also the losses that are limited per the statute are not an option you cannot change those levels and we cannot disallow them they are limited the basic mandated definition includes the full Social Security and excludes the IRA distributions and that is all very lovely straightforward sounds simple and wonderful for the applicant and the assessor's office if you're sitting in Albany and because what happens now is the starting point is written in the statute the federal adjusted gross income so if you don't file an income tax return who will be presenting the assessor with a federal adjusted gross income when we cannot mandate with a file an income tax return and we're not charged with calculating it ourselves but not simplistic complete this without that information we are we are continuing and I will be waiting at beta breath with my list of questions for the Department of Taxation and Finance at next month's New York State assessors conference okay yeah so by definition the federal adjusted gross income includes deductions and exclusions you cannot arrive at a starting point without filing but we cannot compel a taxpayer to file that return the applicants trying to drive that themselves May omit things because they've never filed they don't need to file and you almost need to be a CPA nowadays to complete those applications anyway with the federal government um so we're not really sure what we're supposed to do with that they did give us a worksheet I looked at the worksheet and it doesn't resemble the federal adjusted gross income very strongly the options that you have before you however the local options are you could opt out of including the full Social Security and then just use the taxable instead and the reason I deviated from my slide was to so that you could now look at this and say oh well we don't want to include full Social Security that's a bigger number right but maybe you do and I suggest that you do because otherwise every person who applies in our office who receive Social Security and I can see confidently it's going to be 95 or more of our applicants are receiving Social Security the difference would be those who are 65 and first eligible but maybe not yet receiving their social security that's where that maybe five percent comes in that might be generous if they don't file an income tax return someone's got to tell us what their taxable Social Security would have been and if the goal of changing this definition was to simplify it for the applicant please consider that our definition should include the full Social Security and I will later through these slides show you how that's not a detriment to our applicants because we've already been including the full Social Security the people who already in the program will not see a shift based on that fact the second option that you have is to opt into including the IRA distributions we need to think about that very carefully because while that may sound good in some situations there are two different kinds of IRAs this also is a forte of mine which I teach to the other assessors IRAs come in two forms there's a Roth IRA and there's a traditional IRA your Roth IRAs will never show on the income tax return the Roth IRA being a newer investment than the traditional IRA you pay your taxes in advance and so it's already been taxed it will not show on a federal income tax return or a state income tax return even if you take distributions so if you are to include IRA distributions you will only be including those that are traditional IRAs I would suggest to you it is possible that traditional IRAs are going to be found among the older senior citizens and usually those who are less affluent because there's a certain income Threshold at which people will transfer from a traditional over to a Roth IRA to continue to get certain benefits so if you were to take that option you would be penalizing the people with a traditional IRA by including their distributions you wouldn't even be penalizing them consistently because they don't have a required minimum distribution until 72 now so they would be getting the exemption starting at age 65 and if they don't begin to take distributions till 72 when they get to 72 and start to take money out of the asset they've saved toward their retirement and now we include it here their income jumps from that having that and that's not consistent for them so you need to consider that very carefully the third option is to exclude unreimbursed medical expenses this is not new it has been around a very long time it has never been part of our definition here in Webster on any of our jurisdictions it was not an option that was ever taken before and I will and I I suggest to you that this is the one thing that defies the goal of Simplicity and you of using the federal income tax return documents not only does that cause people to go back to or to to do a cumbersome application project for both the applicant and the staff but it's brought with the opportunity for fraud intentionally or unintentionally because how could the Assessor's staff know the uniqueness of each and every applicant's medical insurance program and how would we know that they paid for something and got reimbursed if they forgot to show us the reimbursement statement and while it's not foilable because it would be personal information do you really want the public to be giving us their personal medical history their list of medications what is wrong with them all that medical information that you would not be able to get if you walked into the hospital to ask them for it but in order to get a benefit you'd be asking them to give that to our staff I don't recommend that no are you following the options okay the next slide so a review this is a this is a cheat sheet I'm going to be handing out to the assessors a review of uh the overview of the definition if you look at the blue items here this is really how simple it can become when you file an income tax return probably 60 to 4 maybe 60 or more percent of our applicants file an income tax return right now so many of our applicants will enjoy the simplistic approach compared to the more cumbersome approach that was there before the mandated without any options is that you will start at the star on line 11 adjusted gross income you will add in see the plus sign on line 2A it's not part of your federal adjusted gross income it's off to the left we need to add that in we would use the basics or the the full Social Security benefits on line 6A again we're following the blue line which means you would need to subtract outline 6B because that's part of the federal adjusted gross income and we would subtract outline 4B which is the IRA taxable distributions that would give you the basic definition up to the point of navigating the losses so that's easy if they file an income tax return because it's all sitting right there on the return if you had options instead of subtracting out the IRA one option would be to to include it I put a plus sign but it would be to include it Social Security you would use the 6B instead of the 6A which means you would make no adjustments because it's already part of line 11.
have I learned to navigate a tax return that's why I hire account I do too yes the legislative definition of income by default is more generous it eliminates several items that were previously considered as income for the purposes of the two exemptions and to raise your income limits now would be another layer of generosity so your income definition options for the 2024 role by March 1st of 2024 you can do nothing and by doing nothing that is to say that you accept the basic mandated definition I have checked her town code because I knew the town attorney would be asking me this question so in anticipation um we don't need to change anything in our town code the way it is written because it did not refer in any specific way to how income was defined it was left into the statute so it would still read fine and you don't need to change our town code for either of the exemptions another option would be to choose among any of those combinations of options the options you have you can couple them up so while they were trying to simplify they've given us three options if you take a basic plus three options the mathematical possibilities without repeating any possible combination leaves you with eight total combinations of options to steer this toward what each Community would want and you can revisit this in future years this is not your only opportunity so the eight possible combinations are here on my PowerPoint slide it popped in there I've numbered them one through eight across the top part of the line just because I was having fun with this Charlie's laughing I've put an ax over the ones that include the unreimbursed medical expenses because I hope I'm reading your minds correctly to say you don't want us to have all that personal information in our office um down here is the 2023 let me blow this one up even further for you how's that the 2023 approved applications so what do I want to show you here among those eight possible combinations I took four being the basic mandate no options opting to include opting out of including full Social Security which is to say to use the taxable and then opting into the IRA and the all and then the combination of the two of them the staff pulled 200 random existing applications off the asset off the Roll Off the Shelf excuse me and we went back and processed that these four totals how would it add up for those 200 applications and I'm going to show you some statistics on on the following slide but this is in comparison to like or maybe this is I'm sorry I had so many different versions of this trying to simplify it this is the simplified version there you are um including um the zeros on here that where you can see the sample size is 200.
for the town you please read the blue columns I also did this for the school district I'll be calling them tomorrow to alert them to the change and ask them if they wish to do anything um so I as long as I had them in front of me also calculated for the the school The Village if anybody in the village is looking um they match the towns so those statistics would be identical for that so we've got three out of four represented right here on this slide in 2023 assessment role the sample size of 200 already approved applications including all the zeros was a 22 percent approval of an exemption I think I just said that wrong I didn't say it in the most clear way the if I averaged up all 200 of those lines some of them are zero there's a 22 percent exemption aggregately the number that was granted was 119 out of the 200.
the number of them that were granted at 50 percent is 66 of that 200. and the average of those that were granted instead of the ones including zeros anybody who got an exemption those 37 percent is the average exemption of this sample set does it make sense if we go forward and you see the basic mandate we have the same sample set we now would have 142 being granted compared to the 119 on the role before the actual approved one these are um speculative if you change the definition 86 would be now at 50 percent and 45 would be your average exemption by definition it's more generous let that soak in for just a second if you go to the option should you decide to take the option of using a taxable Social Security keeping in mind the administrative cumbersomeness that's going to be reintroduced just on a new topic then for both the applicant and the staff out of the 200 191 would be granted some benefit 179 of them would be at 50 percent and 49 would be your average exemption most of them are 50 if you take out the full taxable social or if you take if you take out using the full Social Security the reason for that is we were always including it before we were always including it so to exclude it is to offer a raise you can see the numbers on the others I won't walk you through them I also had to make the assumption that you did not change the income limits going forward because the purpose of this exercise was just to analyze the impact of the change in definition on a small sample set of our previously approved applications because we had data on them do you have any questions on this no okay so what's next if the board decides to make any changes to the income limits or if the board desires to adopt any options found in the new income definition then a public hearing is required one for each of these two exemptions everything that I said while I kept referring to senior citizens is also true of the limited income persons with disabilities the earlier that your decision is made the earlier that we can answer the questions for our applicants which are coming to us daily and who are currently applying Donna yes sir I don't know if these are questions or the three things that I gleaned from what you just presented one you said at the beginning or very early ad the crystal ball ask of what we did when we did nothing a year ago okay because now this new definition of income you said by definition it is more generous and if we start to give some of these local options it increases the generosity yes and third and last but not least and the last page you showed we would go from the whatever the the 17 percent average granted and 119 granted to 142 Grand and the average is 45 percent and that and we don't have any choice on that that's just the use of the unit that is correct I to me we don't do anything I just want to add that while depending on which side you're looking at this we increase our generosity but we're also increasing the punitive side of that to those who don't qualify and will have to pick up the remainder of the taxes that these that those who do qualify don't pay yes you're remembering our prior conversations right where we talked about the census demographics where there are people who are not age eligible whose income in their home of 58 400 would make them qualify for this except that they are not age eligible some of them are feeding children yes right so it is a difficult place that we find ourselves and I understand why the state is doing this it's needed refreshing it was very it was very cumbersome so this is more simple the the real Crux of it is that by placing the starting point in the statute at the term called the federal adjusted gross income and for those people who don't file what would have been their Federal Justice gross income it's repeated in the statute who's going to give us that number we immediately have two classes of filers of the application to us and we're trying to help the people who don't file an income tax return get to that beginning point because we're not CPAs yeah we can't do that and then I said the three things like lean the other one is is that you said that 60 of your applicants file tax returns a little over that I'm guessing and then you said you have to ask at this conference next week what do we do if your starting point is the adjuster grossing up at the tax return so that by definition is another reason in my opinion why we do nothing now and maybe you come back and tell us what you heard from that conference of what you do for the 30 or 40 percent that don't file taxes because if if this Board needs to move on something you said we can move on these things before March of 24.
but as we sit here in mid-september of 23 I I don't see it right right unlike the resolution that you just passed right that's easy there's minor changes you don't wish to Let It Go by you don't want it to expire you're going to do it because you can do it now and it doesn't matter there's no rush this one I think it is better to let's sit and wait let's see if we can learn more what will we learn does that help us make a decision or do you do like you did last time which is okay let's do nothing let's see that impact because if you do if you do more you know you're just going to be having a bigger impact right right let's see what that impact is let's see um how that affects so many things that your board is responsible for making financial decisions about and here's this new definition shifting your funds around really okay hello well I appreciate I mean there's a lot well it's mind-numbing and I come from an accounting background but when you explained what the local opt-ins are but from your perspective what you see boots on the ground in your office of how hey traditional Roth IRAs I think you would unintendedly be hurting the less affluent senior if you opted for that those explanations you gave were excellent I don't want to drag this I think we're standing pad for now yeah unless I don't want to speak for the rest of you and I'm sorry that was a long presentation across the stand Pat we're good okay no you you did you did a lot of you did a lot of good analysis then very very in-depth and uh obviously a lot of work went into it so well New York state is offering a um worksheet for their senior citizens it just came out a few days ago and I took a look at it and it's it's not complete it doesn't get you to a it's not going to allow the person who's so if you file an income tax return and you're paying an alimony and that is true in this category of of age of applicants you still have people who are paying alimony or receiving alimony um they wouldn't be able to deduct it somebody disagreed with with what your office did so they could then challenge you through Greeks through the board of assessment review yes and then they would have to in a public meeting discuss all of their personal income sources it's just okay we prefer not to go that route I'm glad we slide your last to these three because it was Wise It's a lot and I and I that concludes Our Town board workshop for the evening however uh for some of us I'm making emotion under Section 105 uh to enter into executive session under sub chapter D discussions regarding proposed pending or current litigation that's my motion uh bill all in favor I am the only in only invited is Town attorney Town board and town attorney