Fairview Versus Fairview

I've been meaning to write this frivolous post for a long time. Now's the time. No, it's not a belated April fools joke.

The Fairview Fire District is a small fire district, only a few square miles in size, formed early in the twentieth century. Yet it has a large budget, since it's a predominantly career fire district which provides both fire protection and emergency medical services. Fairview responds to a few thousand alarms per year. Fairview contains many tax exempt properties including a community college and other institutions of learning, a religious hospital facility, town and county government properties, institutions for people with disabilities, and various other not-for-profit organizations. Approximately half of Fairview's market value is tax exempt. As a result of all these factors, Fairview has the highest fire tax rate in the county, and perhaps one of the highest fire tax rates in New York State.

I'm obviously describing the Fairview Fire District in Dutchess County, right? Right?!?

Nope. I fooled you! Although all of the above well describes Fairview in Dutchess, the above narrative just as well describes the Fairview Fire District in Westchester County. That's right, the Town of Greenburgh in Westchester County contains a fire district called the Fairview Fire District. It's just spooky how many similarities there are between the two same-named districts.

Similarities Between the Two Fairviews

Fairview in Dutchess is 4.5 square miles; Fairview in Westchester is 5.5 square miles. Fairview in Dutchess was formed in 1910; Fairview in Westchester was formed in 1927. Both districts have multi-million dollar budgets primarily derived from fire taxes, though both receive some income from Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOTs). Fairview in Dutchess has approximately 17 career firefighters and about as many volunteer members, responding to about 1,750 alarms each year; Fairview in Westchester has 45 career firefighters and 16 volunteer members, responding to about 2,500 alarms each year.

Fairview in Dutchess contains Dutchess Community College; Fairview in Westchester contains Westchester Community College. Folks, I'm not making this up! Fairview in Dutchess contains St. Francis Hospital; Fairview in Westchester contains the Hebrew Hospital Home. Fairview in Dutchess contains Dutchess County and Town of Poughkeepsie government properties; Fairview in Westchester contains Westchester County and Town of Greenburgh government properties. Fairview in Dutchess contains Greystone Programs; Fairview in Westchester contains a center for retarded adults run by the New York State Division of Mental Health. You get the picture.

The last I looked (2012), 51.7 percent of the market value for Fairview in Dutchess is tax exempt. For Fairview in Westchester, the corresponding figure is “more than 47 percent”.

Now let's get to the fun part — tax rates. You knew I'd get to that eventually. The 2013 true value tax rate for Fairview in Dutchess is $6.70; that for Fairview in Westchester is “only” $4.80. Still, $4.80 is quite a high fire tax rate. One official of Fairview in Westchester believes it is the highest fire tax rate in Westchester County.

Differences Between the Two Fairviews

Fairview in Dutchess has a single firehouse, which is staffed 24x7. Fairview in Westchester has two firehouses, which are staffed on a more limited basis. Fairview in Dutchess spans portions of two towns, Poughkeepsie and Hyde Park; Fairview in Westchester is entirely contained within the Town of Greenburgh. There are undoubtedly other differences between the two Fairviews, but they've been more difficult to find than the similarities. Nope, you just can't make this stuff up.

Big Three Fire Districts Continue Divergent Tax Strategies

This post updates one I posted a year ago, adding data for the 2013 proposed budgets.

Each of the Big Three Fire Districts of Dutchess County — Arlington, LaGrange, and Fairview — seems to have employed its own tax strategy for meeting the continuing fiscal challenges of the 2008 economic meltdown.  LaGrange's strategy seems a relatively moderate reflection of the economic meltdown, Arlington appears to be on a spending spree, while Fairview appears to be starving the District of resources.  This viewpoint about Fairview is consistent with the fact that Fairview has not been contributing adequately to its reserve funds in recent years, as described here and here.

The following chart gives one way to see the dramatic differences among the three strategies:

Each bar in the above chart shows the cumulative increase in tax levy, compared with the 2008 tax levy.  That is, each bar shows how much more money has been collected between 2008 and that year than would have been collected if every tax levy to that point were equal to the 2008 tax levy.  For example, a 2009 bar shows the difference between the 2009 tax levy and the corresponding 2008 tax levy, expressed as a percent of the 2008 tax levy; a 2010 bar shows the difference between the 2009 tax levy and the corresponding 2008 tax levy plus the difference between the 2010 tax levy and the 2008 tax levy, expressed as a percent of the 2008 tax levy. In other words, this chart illustrates the effect over time of deviating from a strategy of holding the tax levy flat at the 2008 level.  Because all changes are normalized relative to each District's 2008 tax levy, this chart makes it possible to directly compare each of the Big Three fire districts with each other.

Strategies of the Big Three — Tax Levy Viewpoint

The LaGrange Fire District has taken the moderate strategy of maintaining its tax levy relatively close to its 2008 level.  Thus, its bars are barely visible until 2012.  The amount of additional tax money LaGrange will have collected through 2013 is just 6.7 percent of LaGrange's 2008 tax levy, or $331,000.  That's the meaning of LaGrange's 2013 bar of 6.7 percent.

The Arlington Fire District has taken the strategy of significantly increasing the tax levy almost every year, so that the cumulative increase in Arlington's fire tax levy from 2008 until 2013 (proposed budget) is 82 percent.  Thus, the amount of additional tax money Arlington will have collected through 2013 is 82 percent of Arlington's 2008 tax levy, or about $10.6 million.

Now we come to poor Fairview. And I mean poor. The Fairview Fire District has taken the opposite strategy from Arlington by decreasing its tax levy every year until 2012.  The cumulative decrease in Fairview's fire tax levy from 2008 until 2013 (proposed budget) is 18.6 percent.  This means that the amount of tax money Fairview has failed to collect through 2013 is 18.6 percent of Fairview's 2008 tax levy, or about $563,000. Fairview's 2013 proposed tax levy is the first time Fairview has exceeded its 2008 tax levy. That's why Fairview's 2013 bar is shorter than its 2012 bar.

Strategies of the Big Three — Tax Rate Viewpoint

Taxable market values in the big three fire districts have fallen every year since 2008.  For the period 2008 to 2013, they fell a total of about 27 percent in LaGrange and Arlington, but only 16 percent in Fairview.  Fairview's shallower decline means that Fairview's tax rate has taken less of a hit than LaGrange and Arlington have incurred.  Nevertheless, the differing strategies of the Big Three are starkly evident in this chart of cumulative tax rate increase since 2008:

The above chart is easier to explain than the previous one.  Each bar is simply the percent increase in the true value tax rate for the year, compared with the corresponding 2008 tax rate (rather than compared with the previous year's tax rate).  Because all tax rates are normalized relative to each District's 2008 tax rate, this chart makes it possible to directly compare the strategies of each of the Big Three fire districts.

The true value tax rate is a good measure of how steeply taxpayers' wealth — measured by the market value of their properties — is taxed.  Therefore, the above chart shows, for each fire district, how much more steeply taxpayers are being taxed compared with the meltdown year of 2008.  Looking at the proposed 2013 budgets, Arlington will tax 66 percent more steeply; LaGrange will tax 42 percent more steeply; poor Fairview will only tax 28 percent more steeply.

The Proposed 2013 Budgets Continue These Divergent Strategies

The proposed 2013 budgets for Arlington and LaGrange are not isolated decisions, but are continuations of strategies that have been followed by these district since the economic meltdown of 2008. Fairview, however, appears to be changing its strategy in the last year or so, with two double-digit tax rate increases in a row. Even so, the above charts show that Fairview still hasn't caught up with LaGrange regarding its response to the economic meltdown.

Joel Miller Just Can't Get Fairview Facts Straight

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Try as he might, New York State Assemblyman Joel Miller just can't get his facts right regarding the Fairview Fire District. On his first try, in a Poughkeepsie Journal Valley Views article on April 22, 2012, he wrote

Fairview alone had fire district tax rates nearly 10 times higher than 27 other towns in Dutchess County in 2010.

I pointed out in Joel Miller's Flawed Legislation for Fire District Budget Empowerment that there are only 20 towns in Dutchess County, and that even if he meant “fire districts” instead of “towns” (which would have made more sense), his statement is still not even close to correct.

Flawed Staff Work

In preparation for that blog post, I spoke with the staffer for Miller who had generated this misstatement. This staffer had already reviewed some of my own reports, including The Big Three Fire Districts of Dutchess County. It became clear to me that this staffer was not well prepared to interpret quantitative information, and the staffer readily conceded as much. My instinct was that if Miller were to release a corrected statement, it might also be wrong. Because I genuinely wanted facts to be correctly stated, I suggested a corrected statement, and I offered to preview any proposed new statement about Fairview. I never heard from Miller or any of his staffers about this matter.

My instinct turned out to be correct. On April 26, Miller sent a press release to each Fairview Fire Commissioner. This press release was essentially a rewording of his Valley Views article, except that the incorrect statement about Fairview was replaced by a new incorrect statement about Fairview:

Fairview alone had fire district tax rates nearly eight times higher than 30 other fire districts in Dutchess County in 2010.

The irony is that the above statement appears to be a mis-quote of a statement in my own report, which reads

Fairview’s tax rate is nearly eight times the average of the non-big-three districts.

Apparently the staffer thought the word “average” in my statement didn't really mean anything important, and could just be omitted! But as most European high school students know, an average of a bunch of numbers must be smaller than some of the numbers being averaged. In fact, for ordinary data like tax rates, roughly half the numbers can be expected to be greater than the average. Maybe even much greater.

And so it is in this case. Half the non-big-three fire districts had tax rates greater than the average of the non-big-three, and half had tax rates less than the average. So Fairview's tax rate was eight times higher than only 14 other fire districts — not 30 other fire districts.

Incidentally, “30 other fire districts” in Miller's statement is wrong too. There were only 30 fire districts in the whole analysis, and the big three fire districts were excluded from this average, so there could only be 27 non-big-three districts. The (weighted) average of these 27 was greater than 14 of these districts, and smaller than 13 of these districts, as one would expect. For five of these districts, Fairview was only about four times higher — not 8 times higher as Miller claimed.

Miller Has Been Ambivalent About Accuracy

This post isn't about flawed staff work. The principal is responsible for the work of his staff. If Miller had any doubt whether his staff could handle the fire tax rate issue, the doubt was resolved the first time the mistake was made. At that point, Miller knew — or should have known — that his staff didn't know what they were doing on this issue, and so were unlikely to make a proper correction on their own. Miller could have arranged for an independent review of his proposed “correction” before it was released. (I would have been glad to accommodate.)

But this post isn't just about fire taxes either. Joel Miller represents 6 of Dutchess County's 20 towns in the New York State Assembly. Yet he allowed himself to write “27 other towns in Dutchess County,” a gaffe that he or any member of his staff could easily have corrected without knowing anything about fire tax rates.

Taken together, these mistakes show Miller to have been ambivalent about the accuracy of his factual statements. Such lapses affect his credibility.

Joel Miller Combats Incestuously Elected Fire Commissioners

New York State Assemblyman Joel Miller has introduced legislation to provide for election of fire commissioners in the November general election. Under current New York State law, election of fire commissioners is held on the second Tuesday of December from 6:00 P.M. to 9:00 P.M., often at a different polling place than for the November general election. According to my recent conversation with Miller, he had intended to mention this initiative, called the Fire District Community Participation Act, in his April 22, 2012, Valley Views article in the Poughkeepsie Journal, but it was somehow omitted.

I heartily support Miller's initiative.

Why should fire districts be any different from other local governments?

Fire districts are just one more kind of local government in New York State, along with towns, cities, villages, and counties. I know of no reason why fire districts should live by different rules than any of these other local governments. In my recent post Joel Miller's Flawed Legislation for Fire District Budget Empowerment, I used this reasoning to oppose Miller's initiative for popular vote on fire district budgets. Here, the same reasoning argues in favor of Miller's initiative to make the fire commissioner election process the same as that in other local governments. My view in both cases upholds the basic principle that fire districts should live by the same rules as other local governments.

Current law for fire district elections distorts the voice of the people

Although fire commissioners — the representatives in our representative democracy — are nominally elected by popular vote, New York State law provides that this vote must take place on a different day from the general election, usually at greatly restricted hours, and often at a different polling place from the general election. The practical result is that most voters who bother to vote in fire district elections are those with a substantial personal stake in the outcome — firefighters, fire district officials, and their families. Miller, in the Valley View article, describes the resulting distortion of the people's voice in his usual restrained way as “incestuously elected commissioners.”

How low is voter turnout in fire district elections?

Voter turnout in fire district elections can be put into perspective by comparing it with that in the general election. An article in the New York Times of November 16, 2010, asserts that New York ranked dead last among all 50 states in voter turnout in that year's general election. How low was dead last? Only 32.1 percent of registered voters voted. But that was in the general election. In the Arlington Fire District's election of December 13, 2011, voter turnout was 0.44 percent, according to data in Miller's Valley View article. So in the general election, one out of three registered voters actually voted, but in the Arlington Fire District's election, it was one out of 230. Such a minuscule voter turnout is probably typical for fire district elections in New York State. It is clear that representative democracy is not working effectively for fire districts in New York State.

Abolish taxation with slanted representation

In decades past, fire districts were mostly volunteer, and their tax rates were correspondingly low. It could be argued that fire district “taxation with slanted representation” didn't matter too much in the past, because little money was at stake. Those days are long past. In many districts, volunteerism has dropped off dramatically, and been replaced by career firefighters. Like paid employees in any other field, career firefighters are expensive. Fire tax rates have soared. In some fire districts in Dutchess County, fire taxes are the second largest item of property tax, bested only by school taxes. There is no place in today's world for fire district taxation with slanted representation. Fire district taxation should have the same standard of representation as other local governments do. This means that fire commissioner elections should be part of the general election, as Miller proposes.

As always, I welcome your reasoned comments to this opinion piece.