New Rochelle Resident, Steve Mayo Files Court Action to Block Mayor Bramson’s Illegal Garbage Tax

NOTE: New Rochelle citizens will gather at 10AM on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at New Rochelle City Hall to voice their outrage at the illegal and irresponsible garbage tax that will cost every New Rochelle home and apartment owner hundreds of dollars more in city taxes every year.

Shakespeare in his timeless tragedy Romeo and Juliet said, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. In other words, regardless of what name you call something, it doesn’t change what it is and it certainly doesn’t change the way it smells. In the 2012 New Rochelle city budget, Mayor Bramson and the City Council hid a $223.00 tax for every single house and individual apartment in New Rochelle. They refer to this tax as a Garbage Fee but that doesn’t change the way it smells or what it is…it stinks and it’s a tax.

The Garbage Fee/Tax is wrong for New Rochelle taxpayers because our problem is not a lack of revenue, it is a lack of discipline when it comes to spending. So giving Mayor Bramson and the City Council more of your money to spend is a flawed logic. The fact that the tax is logically flawed however is trumped by the fact that it is illegal.

New York State law prohibits municipal governments from charging a fee for a service that exceeds a reasonable cost for that service. The law also prohibits municipalities from using revenues from a service fee for use in offsetting the costs of general governmental functions.

In the 2012 City Budget you will find this passage in support of the Garbage Fee/Tax, “To help address the projected shortfall, the FY 2012 budget proposes to increase the residential refuse fee from $66 per residential unit per year to $223 per unit per year (qualifying senior citizens will continue to pay $30 per unit per year). This increase will cover our full refuse collection and disposal costs and will generate an additional $4.2 million in revenue that would otherwise be covered by a tax rate increase or by service cuts deeper than those proposed.”

There you have it. The budget document itself stands in stark contradiction to the law.

New Rochelle Resident Steve Mayo has filed a court action called an Article 78. Article 78 is a mechanism of New York Civil Law that allows a regular citizen like Steve to stop a government agency or officer from acting outside their jurisdiction. That is precisely what the Mayor and Council are attempting to do by flouting the law that prevents them from using illegal revenue sources like the Garbage Fee/Tax.

Upon filing the Article 78 action, Mr. Mayo said, “I’m just one taxpayer and taking on city government is kind of a David Vs. Goliath proposition but I believe that when taxpayers see how outrageous this fake ‘fee-tax’ is, this issue will gain attention and support. Then we can work together as an informed and mobilized citizen group to stop this ‘slight of hand’ type of accounting in our city budget.

Mr Mayo added, “The presumptuousness, the disingenuousness of the majority in masking their machinations is positively insulting, never mind being a textbook example of ‘opacity in government.’ ”

Steve Mayo is a citizen-activist who opposes overspending and overtaxing by government at all levels. Steve is dedicated to organizing and advocating for the average New Rochelle taxpayer. The mission of Tax Justice For New Rochelle is to inform taxpayers of how their hard-earned dollars are being spent by their local, elected officials and to help provide a platform for those taxpayers to influence their city government.