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Latest Newsletter

Letters to the Editor: School Taxes

September 09, 2008

To The Editor:

When this year’s School Tax bill arrived, something snapped, as it may have for thousands of other New Yorkers on fixed incomes. And what’s become crystal clear to us is that we now must reconsider the gifts we give (and have given over the years) to a variety of organizations and individuals.   These include:
        All Candidates, Officeholders & their Parties*
        Bannerman’s Castle Trust
        Black Rock Forest Consortium
        Cornwall Historical Society
        Cornwall Lion’s Club
        Cornwall (Town & Village) PBA’s
        COVAC (Cornwall Vol. Amb. Corps)
        Manitoga
        Nature Museum of the Hudson Highlands
        Newburgh Family YMCA
        Orange County Land Trust
        Friends of the Palisades
        Safe Homes of Orange County
        Scenic Hudson
        St. Luke’s-Cornwall Hospitals
        Storm King Art Center
        Storm King Engine Co. #2
        Storm King School, et al
   
Unfortunately, until New York State creates an alternative to the imposition of School Taxes skewed so heavily against property owners, we will be forced by the alarming reality of shrinking life savings in an age of exploding energy and food costs, to take a far tougher position regarding our charitable and community contributions.

This drastic step may help us and others a bit, but certainly does not guarantee that we’ll be able to remain here. It also has a negative impact on those who will no longer receive our (and other’s?) donations.
   
All of those involved in the workings of the groups listed above (who have benefited to some small degree from our financial assistance) must, we believe, realize that they cannot sit passively on the sidelines while so many of the people who’ve supported them face ruination through unfair taxation.

We sincerely hope that the affected individuals, organizations and their officers will add their voices to the growing calls for school tax reform.

Lee & Jaci Murphy
Cornwall-on-Hudson

*These are the people who have the power to reform this unfair taxation that’s chasing New Yorkers away.


Comments:

Extremely profititable "Non Profits" should pay their taxes too. Think about this: nonprofit hospitals, universities, charities and sports groups that have been ordained "tax exempt" by the IRS are amassing billions of dollars in assetts and pay their heads hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in salaries. According to the New York Times, property tax exemptions for non profits alone added up to nearly 13 billion in lost funds for local governments in 2006. Charity Navigator, a nonprofit watchdog group, reports that nonprofit CEO's earn higher incomes than executives in comparable industries. Some of the highest nonprofits earn over 600,000 a year. In 2006, the salaries for executives in the top 5,000 nonprofits totaled $770 million as per Charity Navigator. In Massachuchusetts, state legislators are in the process of assessing whether they should begin taxing Harvard Universitie's endowment, which has accumulated an incredible $35 Billion in assets. Time to think out of the box. C-O-H has its share of non profits while we pay One Million Dollars a year in interest payments on our debt. If we don't think fair and reasonably expect your taxes to go WAY up.


posted by P W on 09/24/08 at 9:59 PM

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