The Reason Why County Goverment Gets High Bond Ratings
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- May
- 13
It’s simple.
The reason why is because they’re guaranteed the taxes from the local municipalities that are charged with doing the tax collecting. There’s no lateness with money. No excuses. The towns have to fork it over, no matter what.
In other words, the towns have to do the county’s dirty work. County government can’t lose.
The other day I talked to David Dwinell, Greenburgh’s receiver of taxes, and he told me that the town collected 89 percent of its town and county tax receipts by the April 30 deadline, not a bad record. In fact, he said, that’s better than last year.
Nevertheless, more and more taxpayers have been asking if they could pay half their burdensome tax bills and defer paying the rest at a later date. Paul Feiner, the town supervisor, has proposed this idea as a way to take some of the financial pressure off people.
The county, of course, does not allow this. Taxpayers must all or nothing, and if they pay nothing then they’re assessed a two percent penalty for the being late. The penalties increase over time.
“I’ve just noticed that in the 20 years I’ve been here,” Dwinell said, “there seems to be that paying the taxes are more of a struggle this time than in the past, due to the economic times, due to the cost of gas…due to the cost of everything.”
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 at 1:09 pm by Phil Reisman.
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Phil Reisman is a veteran journalist and native of Westchester County. He began his career in 1977 as the head copy boy of a startup New York City newspaper that quickly went belly up. Reisman was not to blame for the newspaper's failure, or so he claims.
