Wednesday, April 08, 2009

FROM LOHUD.COM--ABINANTI SUPPORTS CHANGE IN LAW TO ALLOW INSTALLMENT PAYMENTS OF TAXES

Abinanti backs Feiner proposal
April 7 Legislator Tom Abinanti, a Greenburgh Democrat, supports a plan to have municipalities collect taxes in two installments. He’s calling on his colleagues to pass a law permitting that. County law controls the collection of local taxes.

The support comes a day after Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner pitched the idea.


“It is time for the county to review the system of tax collections to see if the benefits to those who don’t pay their property taxes through lending institutions outweigh the additional costs to the municipalities involved,” said Abinanti.
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Posted by Gerald McKinstry on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 2:34 pm

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Could be!!!!
How much extra will it cost us the taxpayers to pay in installments.
Where will the town get the money to pay their debts and what about the payroll.
Will the employees get paid on installments??????
Have you thought this plan thoroughly.
You had better do your homework before this plan is in full swing.

Anonymous said...

Why dont we first ask what % of homeowners have mortgage that require escrows? So they pay monthly. And then is a change in the system going to result in more bank/escrow mistakes?

Why was the following deleted? said...

At the March 24, 2009 Work Session, the Town Attorney Tim Lewis attempted to dismiss all previous documents from the Town of Greenburgh on the subject of Federally Assisted Sewers as being ILLEGAL because he claims that they were written by people who were not authorized to do so. This is an unbelievable new twist to this continuing saga. Town documents gathered and presented in May 2006 include numerous letters written by two different Town Engineers to the Town Board and signed off by the Commissioner of Public Works. Evidence presented to the Town Board also included letters written by the Town Clerk and sent out to over 800 households living on Federally Assisted Sewer Districts. These letters were cc:d to the Town Engineer and the Town Attorney. With so many people being involved in the creation of these documents, how is it possible for the Town to claim that it was illegal for the numerous authors to write them?
The only reason for the Town to take the position of declaring all previous documents illegal is because the Town Attorney knows that the Town has not complied with the State Comptroller's Report. This failure to comply has triggered violations of New York State Law, namely:

Town Law Article 3A Title 5 Section 54 Special Districts
Town Law 202 Expenses of Improvement - How Raised
Town Law 236 Completion of Improvements
Town Law 244 - A - Apportionment of Completed Local Assessment Upon Subdivision or Sale of Land Affected


It is our opinion that the Town has also broken the law by Filing a False Certificate, namely the Schedule of Assessments and Tax Rates that thousands of Greenburgh residents received with their taxes. To get out from underneath the legal entanglement that the Town's refusal to do the right thing by the taxpayers has brought about, Mr. Lewis must claim that past documents are illegal and the State Comptroller made a decision based on its review of these illegal documents.


This legal strategy is doomed to failure since the Town is bound by the mountain of documents that lays out the manner in which Federally Assisted Sewer Districts are to be handled. More importantly, Mr. Lewis's strategy would lead to the Town having the ability to disavow ANY AND ALL previous documents on any subject because the Town Attorney will simply state that they too were written by someone without the legal authority to do so. We would never be able to trust ANYTHING that we receive in writing from the Town again! Some Town Officials don't seem to care about that point, their focus is on getting out of the trouble that they are presently in.


www.sewerdistricttruth.com congratulates Councilwoman Sonja Brown for being the ONLY Town Board Member who displayed the courage and honesty to call for the State Attorney General Public Integrity Unit to investigate the massive amount of evidence presented to the Town Board at its March 24, 2009 Work Session. Evidence that could lead to charges of; misappropriation of funds, fraud, conspiracy and filing a false certificate to be filed.


We encourage all Greenburgh citizens to view the March 24, 2009 Work Session and see for yourselves what went on.



Click on the following link to go to the Greenburgh web page containing past archived videos of Town Board meetings. Click on the March 24, 2009 Work Session. The Sewer District issue is the second topic of discussion:
http://www.greenburghny.com/Cit-e-Access/webpage.cfm?TID=10&TPID=4146

Anonymous said...

is this the same man that paid off greenburgh sanitation workers some years ago???

Anonymous said...

We encourage all Greenburgh citizens to pay your taxes late

Anonymous said...

How can you say that taxes can be paid in installments.
You don't have internal controls to put this in order.

You cannot account for the money that you are taking in now ,

You should have kept Kolesar to show you all the correct manner to keep books.
He found fifty pages or more of bad records and accounting errors and you all want to add more to the list.

Another gem from www.sewerdistricttruth.com said...

Paul,

How do you get around the fact that YOU, THE BOARD & YOUR DEPARTMENT HEADS KNEW that sewer hook in fees were supposed to be credited back to the citizens from that sewer district. This e-mail from Al Regula proves THAT YOU KNEW! Is Tim Lewis going to say that this e-mail was illegal as well???

E-Mail From Albert Regula, Commissioner of Public Works


From: AL Regula
Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2008 5:23 PM
To: Judith A. Beville
Cc: Town Board; Michael Kolesar; Edye McCarthy; John Lucido;
Timothy Lewis; Kenneth Cioce; Bart J. Talamini
Subject: RE: Question for Department Heads

The connection fee set in the resolution extending the sewer district to include the Scarsdale Pump Station was set based on Section 160-4 (Reduction in Fees) of the Town Code which allows a reduction of a connection Fee for an applicant that bears the expense of extending the
Town's sewer main as part of their project. The fee in this case was
reduced to $1500.00 in recognition of the fact that the Town received
from the applicant 540 linear feet of 8" sewer main and 4 manholes, the value of which exceeds $150,000.00. The $1500.00 fee is to be credited to FA #4 and will result in a reduction in the amount to be collected
from the other members of the district in future tax levys.

Albert S. Regula

Commissioner of Public Works
Town of Greenburgh
177 Hillside Ave.
Greenburgh, NY 10607

Anonymous said...

I think that you had better hire this guy to investigate the whole town as far as the sewers go.
If you don't you had better be ready for many law suits because you all willfully shoved this under the rug.
I do think that the town attorney will be willing and ready to represent the town in this matter,but he too will be a looser.

Anonymous said...

Hey Tom, are you going to finance the payments to the villages? The Town is required to pay 100% of the Tax levy to the villages in one lump sum whether we collect it from the individual tax payers or not. Who's going to finance this?

Anonymous said...

Regarding taxes, did you see the report in the Journal News about the increase in the GC7 school tax? The expenditures increase is 1.87% but the tax increase is 3.45%. This is outrageous. I have not gotten a salary increase this year because of the state of the economy and the property and school taxes combined increased by 11%. This is incredible. How can we pay these taxes?

Anonymous said...

Why don't we all meet on April 30 at town hall and pay our taxes based on the 2008 tax bill? We can't support these increases any more. And we can do the same thing in Sept. when school taxes are due.

Anonymous said...

I'd like to know why Abinanti gave money to Ardsley in exchange for the county purchasing a building that they didn't need. It couldn't be because Joanne G. Sold works for him and happens to be President of the Ardsley School board, could it?

I'd also like to know why Gay Silverman is allowed to continue using the pool at the TDYCC when she doesn't pay her bills on time. Is there something she holds over Paul Feiner's head that we should know about?

Is the Town of Greenburgh corrupt? Does anyone out there know if it is and if it is, what sort of corruption is occurring?