The Scarsdale Inquirer – Hometown newspaper of Scarsdale, New York 10583

Village board scrambles to find new sources of revenue

By ILENE NECHAMKIN

New fees, new revenue Fee Estimated revenue Towing................................................. $ 15,000 Banner.................................................... $6,500 Sanitation.............................................$490,000 Sewer .................................................. $335,000 Christie Place........................................ $58,000 Total .................................................. $904,500

Should the village start enforcing a 2-year-old law and tow and impound cars belonging to scofflaws — drivers with at least three unpaid parking tickets old enough to incur maximum penalties — and release them only when all outstanding fines and penalties are paid in full?

Business in the village center might suffer — shoppers already complain about overzealous parking meter management— but the upside of towing scofflaws is that the village gets nonproperty tax revenue.

Faced with a state-mandated 2 percent cap on the property tax levy, the village is scrambling to find sources of revenues other than raising taxes.

At a meeting of the trustees’ Finance Committee last Thursday evening, Nov. 3, deputy village manager Steve Pappalardo presented five sources of nontax revenue including towing scofflaws, three new fees and increasing the annual resident parking permit fee in the new Christie Place underground garage.

Village manager Alfred Gatta said that proposals did not affect “the hundreds of fees” related to the rec department, but are “possible new fees that could raise large sums of money for the village.”

The committee did not take action, and the idea of towing and the other suggestions remain on the table.

As for towing, Pappalardo said that when parking enforcement officers enter the license plate numbers of the cars parked in the village center into their hand-held computers, a scofflaw notice pops up if the owner of the car is a scofflaw.

He said that 6,100 outstanding parking tickets total $625,000 in uncollected fines and penalties, all potential nontax revenue for the village. An “aggressive towing program” could collect about 2 or 3 percent of the balance, $15,000, in the first year, he said.

New Rochelle currently boots and tows; Mamaroneck tows, but only when court is in session, so that car owners can immediately redeem their cars.

Other suggestions

Pappalardo also proposed raising the annual fee for parking in the Christie Place Garage from $1,230 to $1,450, the same amount that White Plains, Bronxville and New Rochelle charge.

He said that the costs of security, lighting and maintenance, all borne by the village, are increasing. “It’s a great garage,” he said.

He proposed charging a $100 “banner fee” to the chiefly nonprofit organizations that hang banners in Chase Park and outside village hall. Last year 60 banners were hung.

(On Tuesday, two banners were hanging outside of village hall on the corner of Crane and Post roads. One banner advertised an upcoming book sale at St. James the Less Church. The other, from the Scarsdale League of Women Voters, urged voters to vote in that day’s election.)

Pappalardo said the fee would “partially reimburse” the village for the approximately $200 in labor and equipment costs it expends from processing each request from start to finish and raise $6,500 over the year.

Several trustees voiced concern that the fee would deter groups from hanging the banners.

Pappalardo also proposed an $85 sanitation collection and disposal fee, imposed on every household, school, house of worship, and club in the village, about 5,800 in all.

He said that current sanitation department services — regular solid waste, commingled recyclables, newspapers and bulky waste at various regular intervals — costs the village about $2.5 million a year. The fee would partially offset operating costs; $85 per household is about 20 percent of the village’s cost.

The refuse fee would be billed each year as a separate line item on the annual real property tax bill, though a separate bill needs to be sent to tax-exempt properties, like churches and temples that do not pay property taxes and get refuse collection free, he said.

He said the fee could raise $490,000 annually.

And Pappalardo suggested imposing a sanitary sewer service fee based on water consumption at a rate of 30 cents per unit of water. The village sanitary sewer collection system, which costs the village about $350,000 a year to maintain, flows into county owned trunk lines.

The fee would raise about $335,000.

Trustee Bob Steves, who chairs the committee, said that it was “important to discuss what fees should cover” and it remained a “philosophical question” to determine the appropriateness of “pushing costs on fees to keep taxes down.”

In lieu of nontax revenue generated by new fees, the village could override the tax cap with the vote of 60 percent of the trustees and simply raise taxes.

Debt

The trustees also debated the role of debt in the budget process and specifically whether the village should avail itself of current low interest rates and launch additional bonds for significant road resurfacing and repair.

Some trustees voiced concern that additional bonds, and debt, might lower the village’s Aaa bond rating.

Trustee Bob Harrison said that the school district issued $58 million in bonds in 2001, and used a construction manager to oversee the projects. “This is a time to be a borrower,” he said, “and have infrastructure repairs.”

Harrison has long favored extensive road resurfacing in the village.

Trustee Richard Toder said he was reluctant to jeopardize the Aaa rating; the school board could issue that amount of debt, he said, because the bond-rating agency knew it had to be approved by the community in a referendum.

No to citizens committee

And at a meeting of the trustees as a committee of the whole, Mayor Miriam Levitt Flisser suggested creating an additional citizens council to resolve problems that don’t require new legislation. She said that problems could be addressed in a more informal way.

But none of the trustees agreed.

For example, Toder said that a methodology for complaints already existed; the village manager investigates and reports back to the village board.

Steves said that an additional committee “will put an additional layer between me and the people I want to serve.”

Trustee Kay Eisenman said that the committee “feels like a tribunal” of citizens judging the actions of the village staff.

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