GREENFIELD — Those who felt the Town Council rushed a vote to split the town’s property tax rate will get another opportunity to weigh in on the idea.
Town Clerk Deborah Tuttle discovered this week that the assessor’s public hearing notice for last week’s tax rate meeting contained the wrong date. Nov. 16 was printed instead of Nov. 15 — meaning the meeting was illegal and the vote taken void.
Meanwhile, the mayor has vetoed the now-moot tax change and promises to do it again if the council votes again to split the tax rate for next budget year.
The Town Council is scheduled to hold another public hearing and to vote again on whether to tax commercial-industrial property at a higher rate than residences during a special meeting on Nov. 29 at 7 p.m. in the GCTV studio, 393 Main St.
The council’s original 9-2 vote in favor of splitting the tax rate drew criticism from the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce and local business owners, who said the 48 hours notice before the amendment was made and voted on was not enough time for residents to weigh in.
The vote would have split the Fiscal Year 2018 tax rate with a residential factor of 1 and a factor of 1.5 for all other classes of property — including commercial, industrial and personal property. The split would have saved the average residential taxpayer $740, but increased the tax rate from $23.27 to $34.79 for nonresidential property owners.
Mayor William Martin said his office is waiting for final clarification on the status of the council’s vote from the Attorney General’s Office and the town attorney. In the meantime, he said he has vetoed all three of the council’s tax classification votes taken last week.
“I vetoed the small business exemption because it places an extra burden on small businesses and business property owners and offers no relief to micro-small businesses and businesses that are more mom-and-pop,” he said. “And then, of course, I vetoed the split tax because of the lack of proper notice — it might be legal to have a 48-hour notice for something this big, but it’s not fair, and there are many, many who are waiting for a public announcement that they could discuss the various classifications and we had very few people there that evening and very few knew about it until the next day.”
Martin also vetoed the council’s vote not to adopt a residential exemption.
“The fact that we had such a non-transparent vote and very limited, uninformed explanation on the outcomes of such a vote, it doesn’t bode well for our town government, our town businesses or our town economy,” he said.
Tuttle said the typo does not affect any of the other votes the council took last week because it was only printed on the assessor’s public hearing notice.
The Nov. 29 meeting was already scheduled for the council to investigate bullying and abuse of power allegations made by the mayor and police chief against council leadership. The tax classification public hearing and vote are first on the agenda.
Martin said if the vote turns out the same, he will once again veto it. If that happens, the council will have to hold another meeting to stay or override the veto.
“We may not have a tax rate for a while if that is the case,” he said, adding the town should have enough cash to carry it through the first quarter without borrowing if tax bills do not go out.