Croton Passes Tax Cap Override Measure

CROTON-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. – The Croton Board of Trustees unanimously passed a tax cap override measure on Monday night, allowing the board to exceed the 2 percent tax levy increase if necessary.

Assistant Village Manager Janine King said the village chose to pass an override measure because “Even if you followed all the procedures correctly, if you made some mistake in your calculations, and it turns out you had gone over the 2 percent increase, you would have to take that increase and put it in a fund. And it becomes money that you can’t use for a certain amount of time.”

She said that passing the override measure allows for flexibility in the budgeting process, and prevents the village from having to put away money inadvertently.

The 2 percent tax levy override measure allows the village government to increase the levy of the village by more than 2 percent. The tax levy is essentially the difference between two subsequent years’ budgets, which affects a homeowner’s tax rate. Although the tax levy controls a homeowners’ tax rate, they are not the same thing.

For example, there would likely be a zero percent tax levy on the village if the estimated budget and the estimated revenue remain the same as between 2011 and 2012. A tax levy is only increased if revenue falls below estimated budget appropriations.

Generally, the levy increases if the budget has grown or if property value assessments fall. The state equalization rate, the equation which calculates your home’s assessment into current real dollars, also plays into the tax levy rate.

For those reasons, a tax levy could remain at 1.5 percent, for example, but a homeowner’s rate could increase 2 percent or more, as it did in some locations in the Town of Cortlandt’s proposed budget.

Although the law allowed for an override measure to be passed the same day as the budget, “there’s a process to this,” said King. “You have to call for a public hearing, you have to publish it in the newspaper, you usually can’t do that in less than a month,” she said.

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