MAYVILLE – Chautauqua County Executive Vince Horrigan is calling for a 4.6 percent property tax cut in his 2016 executive budget, but members of the county legislature think it can be even more.
Last week, members of the legislature’s audit and control committee held their first meeting to review the $256 million spending plan. According to the Jamestown Post-Journal, the committee members feel that they can work to get getting the tax rate by another 2 percent, bringing the new cut after full valuation to 6.6 percent.
Lawmakers would be able to increase the tax cut by finding an additional $300,000 in cuts throughout the budget, along with using $500,000 from an IGT payment. And lawmakers say they could also apply additional sales tax revenue to next year’s budget to offset the property tax. That’s because the county’s .5 percent sales tax hike goes into effect Dec. 1, meaning the county will have an entire month of additional sales tax revenue that was not budgeted for this year that can instead be used for the 2016 budget.
The proposed changes to the budget will be reviewed again later this month during the committee’s Oct. 22 meeting, and brought before the legislature during its Oct. 28 voting session, when the 2016 spending plan is expected to be finalized.
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