The big lie in Chautauqua County municipal budgeting was in force as the County Legislature passed its spending plan and proclaimed that the tax rate for county property taxpayers has been reduced for 2025.

The adopted 2025 $301 million County budget increases spending overall by about $7 million over the 2024 spending document. With some funding coming from other sources such as sales tax, state/federal tax sharing and other sources, the local property taxpayers will make up the rest of the spending with $73.4 million to be collected in 2025 from property taxes we homeowners pay and that’s up about $2 million from the 2024 budget.

The tax rate is what our county, school and local government leaders push as the measurement of how well they are doing in controlling spending. One GOP legislator even defended the budget vote against Democratic critics saying that the current budget is giving a 21-cent per $1,000 of assessed valuation reduction in the tax rate.

This is the big lie. If the county tax rate had been reduced, then all county home property taxes would be going down. But the truth is county property taxes are increasing by $2 million.

The PJ/OBSERVER reported from that meeting the 2025 county government tax rate will be $6.70 per thousand dollars of assessed valuation. Say you own a house with a $100,000 valuation and it had the same valuation last year and your town or city assessor attested it maintained a 100% valuation for both years, you are getting an approximate 2% tax cut for 2025.

But wait. The county raised spending and needs $2 million more than last year for the local share funded by the county property taxpayers. Where is the added $2 million coming from?

The PJ/OBSERVER in a recent editorial sent kudos to the county for “growing” the taxbase. The taxbase grows one of two ways with either new assessments for the very few new housing or industrial builds in the county, or your local assessor increases the valuation of your house and property. An assessment “re-valuation” increase easily gobbles up the 21-cents per thousand tax-rate cut or more. I personally don’t think that the county should get credit for growing the tax base because county properties are now selling for more than they once did. The increase in our property valuations is mostly due to out-of-town investors and lake living lovers have discovered that prices are low here.

Earlier this year we ‘ve read in the PJ/OBSERVER a valid complaint by the current Jamestown city mayor that while the county executive was boasting a 2024 tax-rate cut, the mayor’s Jamestown citizens were experiencing tax-bill increases on their county tax bills. The county executive blamed the Jamestown tax increase on the fact that the city was not assessing its properties at 100 percent of true value. What the county executive didn’t reveal is that since Jamestown was paying more, some other property owners in other county communities paid less in 2024. Further, the real issue wasn’t the failure of the city to be assessed at 100% of true value, but rather the equalization rate determined separately by each of the 29 county municipalities assessors was faulty for the city and failed to properly equalize the assessment for taxpayers in the city.

The news reporters can help end our government leaders big lie by writing how much local share taxes are increasing. The $2 million local share increase for county taxpayers is a reasonable and understandable amount and there was no logical reason for only reporting the tax rate without including the amount of the local share tax increase. A

s a sidebar, I also note that the $2 million to be raised by county taxpayers would’ve been wiped out if the full legislature had taken the Dems up on their idea to shift money out of the growing county surplus fund.

In conclusion, if you live in a home, the same home you always lived in, and the county property taxes you pay at your town or city clerks’ offices will be more in 2025 than you paid in 2024, that’s absolutely a tax increase. Many county residents will pay more in taxes this January than they did last January. That’s called a tax increase.

Norm Green is a Dewittville resident.