Schenectady County dropped from top tax list

Share on Facebook

Save

Schenectady County has dropped out of the Top 10 of most highly taxed counties in the United States as a percentage of home value, according to an analysis by the Tax Foundation.

The county fell two places to 12th in 2007, the third year of decline, based on data released in September by the Census Bureau on owner-occupied housing. In 2005, Schenectady County was eighth highest. It is unclear when Schenectady first made the Top 10.

Nine other counties in New York, led by Niagara, were in the Top 10 in 2007. One county in New Jersey fills out the list.

No Capital Region counties are in the Top 10. The next closest county, Rensselaer, ranks 47th on the list.

According to the analysis, an owner paid in taxes 2.3 percent of the $159,000 value of a home in Schenectady County in 2007. A homeowner in Niagara County paid the highest, 2.9 percent, based on a home valued at $95,800. The national median is 0.95 percent.

Last year, the Tax Foundation’s list caused a stir in the community when Schenectady was the 10th highest county in the United States in taxes as a percentage of home value.

The ranking quickly became political fodder, used by Republicans to attack majority Democrats in the Schenectady County Legislature and elsewhere.

The Tax Foundation also looked at median property taxes paid on homes in 2007. By this measure, Schenectady ranked 71st in 2007; it ranked 77th in 2006. Westchester, Nassau and Rockland counties made the Top 10 in this category with the counties in New Jersey representing the remainder.

The median property taxes paid on homes in Westchester County was $8,422 in 2007. In Schenectady it was $3,728. The national median is $1,838.

Schenectady County Legislator Philip Fields, D-Schenectady, was pleased to hear the latest report. “It means we have been budgeting to minimize growth in property taxes,” he said. “It is good, but I wish it was better.”

The Tax Foundation analysis considers property taxes in aggregate. Fields said the aggregate includes a combination of some or all of the following: city, town, village, school and county taxes. He said county taxes in Schenectady represent the smallest piece of the aggregate, with school and city taxes representing the largest share of the total.

Minority Leader Bob Farley, R-Glenville, said the news was not good. “It is nothing we should be proud of. It is something we should be ashamed of. We are not making progress. People are getting driven out of their homes,” he said.

The foundation describes itself as “a nonpartisan tax research group based in Washington, D.C.”