GREAT VALLEY — The Great Valley Town Board has approved a $918,359 budget for 2019 that will include zero town tax.
Following a couple months of work sessions and a public hearing Nov. 5, the town unanimously passed the preliminary budget with no town tax, mostly as a way to balance out the dramatic increase seen in 2018’s tax bills.
“The town will run 2019 on the sale tax it’s collected,” explained Town Supervisor Daniel Brown.
So far in 2018, the town has collected about $424,000 in sales tax. Brown said a fourth check for the last quarter of 2018 will come in February or March of 2019.
“That and our reserved money is what will run the town in 2019,” he said.
For the 2019 budget, about $500,000 is expected to be used through sales tax with the remaining $418,359 coming from reserve balance funds.
Brown said there will still be a county tax, a fire district tax and a tax for any person who owns property in a special district, such as for the Fairview sewer, on residents’ tax bills.
Last year, the board had voted to take its sales tax revenues in cash rather than applying that amount to the county tax levy on town property, which reduces town taxpayers’ county taxes.
The intent was to reduce town taxes while increasing county taxes at the same amount so that everybody’s town taxes would be lower and county taxes equally higher.
Instead of $79,500, the town board could have appropriated around $450,000, its share of sales taxes generated outside the cities of Olean and Salamanca.
In March, the town voted to offset that one-time 2018 increase by reducing residents’ town taxes to zero for 2019. Moving forward in 2020, town taxes will be influenced by the transition to sales taxes in the budget.
“Next year, we’re going to be coming back online where we will need to create a tax levy,” Brown explained. “How much? We won’t really know.”
Factors such as how much funds are needed for winter highway maintenance or sales tax generating more than anticipated could affect what 2020’s levy would be, Brown said.
“That’s just like any other budget year,” he added. “When we start 2020, hopefully we’ll have a lot of reserve money left over, and we can smooth into that, too.”
(Contact managing editor Kellen Quigley at kquigleysp@gmail.com)
