The Commission has just released a report titled Property Taxes on Tug Hill. It is available on the web at http://www.tughill.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Taxes-Report-Final.pdf. The focus of the report is the costs of local services and their impacts on the tax burden of Tug Hill residents. In particular, the study summarizes the issues surrounding increasing real property tax levies and pro-vides preliminary expenditure trend analysis among various units of government and taxing jurisdictions in the Tug Hill Region. Several case studies are used to demonstrate how rural communities differ from urban and suburban communi-ties, and from each other, in their funding and expenditure practices. Rising property tax levies are of particular concern to local governments given New York State's new real property tax levy cap regulations.
Property tax levies were studied for the years between 1998 and 2008 for all Tug Hill Counties, school districts, Towns and Villages. Levies increased for each of these taxing jurisdictions during this period, but did not necessarily increase each year and did not increase at a steady rate. Counties have, by far, the highest property tax levies followed by school districts, Towns and Villages. During this period, the average Tug Hill County tax levy increased 1.6% annually, the average Tug Hill school district tax levy increased 2.3% annually, the average Tug Hill Town tax levy increased 4.7%, and the average Tug Hill Village tax levy increased 3.6%.
