43°
To the editor:
As many may already know, I had the opportunity to work for New York state Assemblywoman Sandy Galef for eight years and witnessed firsthand how she works so hard to improve the communities and the lives of the residents in her district and throughout New York state.
Beyond her tremendous advocacy and honesty, she makes a point to attend as many events as possible supporting important social causes, businesses, veterans groups, first responders and houses of worship and meeting everyone in her district.
As town supervisor in Ossining, I have also seen how she works to help her communities through legislation and advocacy. One important example was how she helped get phase-in legislation passed to help people impacted severely by the townwide reassessment.
Sandy believes in the value of transparency and accuracy in tax assessment rolls but also understood what a huge shift was occurring for some properties which had been underassessed for many years.
To ease the transition to a full-value assessment roll, she sponsored legislation in the state that would allow those with very sharp increases to have their increases phased in over three years.
This will hopefully make it easier for those impacted to figure out how best to plan for the future.
Without reassessment, we would continue inequities in property taxing with similar properties and neighbors often paying very different rates for tax purposes.
We also would continue to encourage tax certioraris, legal action, and retroactive tax payments which have cost us as taxpayers upwards of $8 million in the past 10 years alone.
Sandy Galef with all her experience as chair of the NYS Assembly Real Property Committee and as an advocate for the people proved once again why she is so valuable to our community with this legislation.
Please join me on Tuesday, Nov. 8 in voting to support Sandy Galef for state Assembly.
Sincerely,
Dana Levenberg
(Dana Levenberg is supervisor of the town of Ossining.)
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