State will subsidize impartial study on whether merging Pelham’s villages will cut taxes

To the editor:

David Joachim’s paper entitled “After Loss of the Tax Break, Should the Pelhams Merge?” was posted on December 10, 2018. Most of the comments on Facebook, and there were hundreds, boiled down to the question of the amount of tax savings to be anticipated.

For those interested in reducing property taxes, the State of New York Office of Local Government has a program under which two villages can request a study of such issues as merging governments and/or combining services. The state will pay 50 percent of the cost of such a study, the villages sharing the other 50 percent. A firm with experience would be retained for an impartial study. The state would then pay 90 percent of the cost of implementing any recommendations that the villages deem worthwhile. (Carl Ublacher 518-473-3355.) Getting the property tax trend to bend downward brings to mind Albert Einstein’s comment that the only miracle he knows of is the miracle of compound interest.

Michael Treanor

622 Pelhamdale Ave.