Niagara County tops tax list

Local News

October 20, 2006

BY Jill Terreri The Niagara Gazette Fri Oct 20, 2006, 11:33 PM EDT

Niagara County taxpayers have a right to think their taxes are high.

Higher than anywhere else in the country, to be precise.

When property tax bills are calculated as a percentage of their home’s value, Niagara homeowners pay the most out of those of any other high-population county in United States, a new analysis has found.

Though Westchester County tops the list of the highest median property tax bills, Brian Phillips, a spokesman for the think tank that compiled the data, believes that the list Niagara County leads is a truer indication of tax burden because while Westchester tax bills are higher, their home values are much higher.

“Niagara is way up there,” Phillips said.

The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group based in Washington, D.C., analyzed 2005 data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Tax Foundation economist Gerald Prante said several factors go into why Niagara — and many other New York counties —dominate the list, especially education funding, which is particularly high in the Empire State.

In 2004, New York spent an average of $11,500 per pupil per year, or $1,500 higher than the national figure.

Prante looked at property taxes paid by homeowners in counties over 65,000 people, the only counties for which data was available.

Across the country, there are 775 of these counties.

Niagara County legislators frequently like to note that their county — with a surplus of $20 million —doesn’t face the financial straits and the control board of its southern neighbor.

But while Niagara homeowners pay a property tax bill of about 2.81 percent of their homes’ values, bills in Erie County are about 2.55 percent, putting the southern county at number seven on the list.

Niagara County leaders contacted for this story declined to comment until they had read the Tax Foundation’s report.

None of this is surprising to Newfane resident Edwina Luksch, who visits Niagara County Legislature meetings frequently to air her concerns about high property taxes and the abundance of public employees and their benefits that outpace those in the private sector.

Luksch and her husband purchased a lakefront home in Ohio 15 years ago, which they’re planning to move to permanently once they sell their Newfane house next year.

It’s not something she’s very excited about, but she sees where New York is headed and she’s not pleased.

Her home in Newfane, assessed last year at $101,300, incurred about $2,500 in school and county property taxes in 2005. That’s with the state’s STAR program that offers school tax rebates for those over 65. Without STAR, her bill would rise between $1,300 and $1,400.

Her total tax bill for her home in Ohio was $863.46 last year. Her Ohio home is appraised at about $61,000, but with a lakefront location and four bedrooms and two bathrooms, she knows she could sell it for more. The Tax Foundation found that in Ashtabula County, Ohio, where Luksch’s home is located, property taxes are on average 1.1 percent of the homes’ values.

She realizes that Niagara County is losing population, which means there are fewer people left to pay the bills and home values aren’t rising.

But she knows more can be done.

“It doesn’t take a genius to take a look around you,” she said. “Every time you increase the property taxes, you decrease the value of my home.”

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