Why Weren't We Warned About This PILOT Payment?

I kept hearing about Sachem's shortfall in revenue, and one particular aspect of it had me intrigued: the Motorola PILOT payment "surprise."  Board member Dorothy Roberts suggested I e-mail Associate Superintendent for Business Bruce Singer about it.  So I did.

That led me to make some inquiries of Brookhaven Town Councilman Neil Foley, concerning the IDA, and the process for how the town, the IDA and the school district work together, so that Sachem can get a handle on the revenue side of its budget equation.

From these discussions and e-mail threads, one thing is becoming clear: Sachem was not shorted over $1MM.  What's less clear is whether or not the PILOT from Motorola was anticipated anyway.  Read on and I'll attempt to explain this convoluted mess:

When I e-mailed Bruce Singer, he said the Brookhaven IDA told the board that Motorola (formerly Symbol Technologies) moved off of PILOT and on to full assessment.  What that means is that the Motorola stopped making Payments In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOTs), but paid regular taxes just like other commercial properties in the town, a large percentage of which goes to the district.  (Call it two-thirds.)  Mr. Singer claims the Board of Education was informed of this move in May of 2014.  In the context of the timeline for the budget and planning, the budget's already printed and you're starting to get to things like public hearings.

But this may not be material to the conversation.  The following was provided by the Brookhaven Town Assessor James Ryan, passed along via e-mail by Brookhaven Town Councilman Neil Foley:

"The Industrial Development Agency (ida) is an agency of the State formed under General Municipal Law. Any property owned by or under control of the agency is exempt from taxes as authorized by Real Property Tax Law Section 412a.

The IDA is authorized to grant tax exemptions for real estate tax, mortgage tax, and sales tax. The IDA typically requires a company that comes to the IDA for tax benefits to pay a PILOT (payment in lieu of tax) for the amount of tax they would have paid before construction of a building or improvements to an existing building.

The PILOT agreement is for a fixed term (generally 10 years) and at the end of the term the PILOT payment is most often an amount that would be the same as if the property were taxable. PILOT payments are made to the IDA and the IDA distributs the PILOT money to all taxing authorities in the same manner as taxes are distributed. So the School District typically receives 67% of the PILOT collected.

Once the real estate tax exemption is exhausted, that is to say once the PILOT payment is equal to the amount of tax ( as per the PILOT agreement) that would be paid were it not for the IDA, then the property is turned back to the property owner and the assessment is returned to the taxable part of the assessment roll.

Motorola was tax exempt during the 12/13 tax year because the property owned by Motorolla was owned or controlled by the IDA. At that time the PILOT amount paid to the IDA was equal to what they would have paid had the property been taxable. In the 13/14 tax year, the property was conveyed back to the Motorolla from the IDA and the assessment was made taxable. Motorolla for the 2013/2014 tax year received a tax bill in the amount of approximately $1,700,000.00 and it was paid to the tax receiver. Motorolla will continue to receive tax bills into the future.

As such, the Sachem School District is mistaken to say that the Town took away $1,000,000.00 in PILOT money since it was replaced by a real estate tax."

Those last few lines are key.  TL;DR - Brookhaven says we got the money, but it was through the usual tax channels, not a PILOT.

Until I receive more information, I'm left to speculate.  Whose responsibility is it to track properties moving off of PILOTs and back onto the tax rolls?  Were Singer and the BOE expecting the PILOT, not realizing they were already getting the money as part of normal, everyday tax payments?  I have e-mails in to both Singer and Foley asking for clarification and will post when I get more information.

I'm also looking to Foley to shed some light on the process for keeping school districts in the loop on sunsetting PILOTs and how we're supposed to learn of these things.  Singer was also supposed to get a statement from the IDA stating that we would have had no advance knowledge of Motorola moving off PILOT, but that was last week and he has yet to deliver.

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt in such situations, and all of this could be attributed to some kind of miscommunication.  But the fact remains, we got the money.  So it's time to stop running around claiming we were shorted.  Check back here for updates.

UPDATE - 9/30 - 9:45 AM: I've exchanged several e-mails and participated in phone calls with Councilman Foley and Brookhaven IDA Deputy Director James Tullo.  I have also heard from Bruce Singer via e-mail and am promised a financial analysis later today.  Please stay tuned.

UPDATE - 10/1 - 2:45 PM.  I have another post up that explains the current situation.

Let's Stop Playing "Small Ball."

This article explains the nature of the systemic problem we're having funding our schools, although I don’t agree with its conclusions.

We’re losing control over our ability to make decisions concerning our school district.  State mandates, especially the unfunded ones, are a culprit.  So is the tax cap and its exceedingly-difficult-to-pierce supermajority requirement.

In the end, most of the big decisions on the budget are already made for us and beyond our control.  The game we’re playing is, for right now, “small ball” over the few million allocated to optional things like clubs, sports, and other things the state doesn’t mandate we carry.  The scary thing is that if things keep going the way they’re going, we’re not going to be able to support programs that we’re required to have.  We’ll quickly march from educational insolvency to financial insolvency.  And it won’t be just Sachem.  Similar problems will be experienced by school systems statewide.

In that way, the above-linked article’s conclusions are correct.  Eventually, the only option we’re going to have in order to cut costs is to cut teachers.  Nobody wants to see that happen.

But accepting a death spiral means we’ve exhausted all avenues.  And we haven’t yet.

To fund our school district, we need to stop playing small ball.  People who play small ball end up arguing endlessly about sports vs. clubs, Arrowettes vs. full-year kindergarten or administration salaries vs. equivalents in the private sector.  Small ball people argue about the tiny, flexible portion of the budget that makes a very small difference to the overall picture.

Nope.  We need to focus on the big picture.  IMHO, here’s how we do it.

1)      Vote in state elections.  Vote to sweep out incumbents.  If you value your childrens’ educational experience, we need to send the message to Albany that when they need a couple billion dollars in revenue to balance the budget, they can’t take it from education and simply expect us to cope.  We also need to get rid of the tax cap, or at least get rid of the supermajority requirement to pierce it.

2)      Work with local politicians to help the Long Island economy.  This is the fix that’s more difficult to connect to the situation, and the remedy that’s going to force me to say some things that are not going to be well-received.  But suffice it to say that we need to attract more of the right businesses to Long Island, and we need to do it in a way that’s not damaging to our tax base.

So with #2, here’s the unpopular bit: Vast swaths of Long Island have become what I call “Economic Flyover Country.”

When I was a kid, we used to have real industry on Long Island.  The kids I played with had parents who worked for Grumman or Arrow or at the Shoreham Nuclear Power Station.  The departure of the aerospace/defense industry on Long Island is an old story, but more recent developments give me pause.

We get excited when UPS announces they want to hire 3,000 seasonal workers locally, but we’re not outraged when JP Morgan Chase announces they’re laying off 195 and closing their offices in Garden City.  “Big deal,” you might be thinking.  “What’s 195 in comparison to 3,000?”

We need sustainable jobs out here on Long Island.  The good corporate jobs.  Not the short-term contract service jobs.  And notice that when you see announcements about jobs coming to or leaving Long Island, it’s the service jobs that are coming, and the corporate ones that are departing.

You might not think this is a big deal, and that’s it’s reflective of the U.S. economy’s move to a service base.  But think about it in the context of our schools.

When you have a corporate headquarters in your school district, the corporation cares about what happens locally.  They source employees locally.  They care about education in that case, because if you have a good school system, it’s easier to convince employees to relocate.  It’s also easier to keep the people you have.  Whether they’re contributing through property taxes or PILOTs doesn’t really matter – they’re part of the tax base and part of the community and we ought to be doing what we can to encourage them.

While our local politicians are working hard, and they have some important victories to crow about, I have two problems.  The first is that property tax breaks are too often dangled out there as an incentive.  This has the exact opposite effect intended, because wherever these companies land on Long Island, the school district loses out on revenue while needing to support an influx of students.

My second problem is that we’re not selling our proximity to New York City, the quality of our workers or our other qualities very well, and as a result, New Jersey and other locales are kicking our butts when we compete to bring good jobs to Long Island.  We’ve had some awful losses the past few years.  

High cost of living, brain drain and tax issues are the likely culprits.  (If we’re not careful, transportation and infrastructure could become others, but that’s another topic for another blog post.)  But the truth is that we should have these companies headquartered on Long Island and we should be reaping the benefits. 

There are a kajillion programs designed to help bring business to Long Island.  We’ve got incubators and accelerators and business zones – all sorts of things.  They may have some limited success getting startups to locate here, but what about the big boys?  When was the last time we convinced a major public company to relocate its headquarters to Long Island?

For the long term, we need to invest in attracting quality businesses to Long Island.  Incubating and accelerating startups is a good start, but our politicians need to get in the game and do what they can to be competitive.

So, as we’re thinking about voting out the state politicians who gave us the tax cap and cut our state aid, we need to also be thinking about who might be good at helping attract businesses to Long Island.  And we need to vote for them.

We need to take advantage of our size.  Sachem is huge.  And with a number of interested, involved voters in the district, perhaps we should think about forming some sort of special interest group.  As a voting bloc, if many of us could align behind restoring education cuts, repealing tax cap legislation, controlling state mandates and investing in bringing business to our area, that would be something I could get behind.

On my first Sachem Board meeting

I consider myself fortunate that the LIRR didn't continue its stretch of significant delays, and that our babysitter was free last night, so both Lauren and I could attend the Board of Education meeting.

It was, by no means, my first board meeting.  I've covered them for various newspapers, attended SWR BOE meetings when I lived in Wading River and have a pretty good feel for what they're supposed to be like, especially when big budget items come to the table.  That said, it was my first Sachem BOE meeting, and it was a doozy.

First, just some general observations:

1. Sachem, you have a very patient and very gracious board.  The board went out of its way to allow parent and resident commentary.  It's not always the case that ad hoc comments from the audience get the attention of the board while they're in the middle of a motion.  I've got to hand it to Mr. Falco.  Dude can run a meeting.  I think he did an admirable job balancing the need for additional public comments with getting through the painful process of making budget cuts.
2. Yeah, it's annoying when people don't 'get it.'  It's annoying everywhere.  When you've got critical budget issues on the table, people show up who otherwise haven't been regular or even semi-regular attendees.  (Me included.)  Some of those people are going to be unfamiliar with the process, or with Robert's Rules or with goings-on from the past few board meetings.  
3. We were harsh on the finance guy.  Mr. Singer, I believe.  (It's tough to see who is who from the back of the auditorium.)  District residents and teachers were jumping out of their seats to point out that he didn't know what dollar figure represented the total number for cuts that needed to be made that evening.  But if you listened carefully, he answered every question put to him accurately.  The confusion stemmed from having cuts on the table and approving cuts in the last round of meetings.  Simply put, you want your finance guy to accurately answer whatever budget line-item questions are put to him.  He's not your big-picture guy who's going to stitch it all together for you to present a comprehensive picture.  Your board president is.
4. A lot of people don't understand these are working meetings.  There's a lot of outrage when people hear "this is the first time I'm seeing these numbers" from a board member or there's actual work being done during the meeting.  That shouldn't be a surprise to people.  State law dictates that this business be conducted out in the open, so it's not realistic for people to expect that business is already conducted by the time the meeting rolls around.  This is what's supposed to happen.  Again, not a big deal (see #2) until the outrage gets dialed up to the point it starts derailing the meeting.

Anyway, I still have some unanswered questions.  Lauren and I elected to leave when the guy in the Eli Manning jersey got up, and it became obvious he was asking questions that other folks had already covered in prior meetings.  (See #2, again.)  That, coupled with the fact that it was 90 degrees in the auditorium with a bazillion percent humidity, and that we had a babysitter at home about to make a three-figure sum watching our three kids, compelled us to bail.

My unanswered questions are thus:

1. Who, specifically, directed our administrators to draw down our reserves starting in 2008?  Without a name, the community can't hold that person accountable (assuming that person is an elected official) unless we know who it is.  I start to get nervous when people say things like "We were told to draw down our reserves and then it would be made up to us."  It smacks of "mistakes were made."  I'm not hearing a name and it makes me nervous that perhaps there isn't anyone to hold accountable.
2. What's the long-term plan?  I know some of these financial developments are recent.  As in "last week" recent.  But we knew the reserves were being drawn down to unacceptable levels back in July.  Where's the plan?

With regard to #2, you saw some proactivity when certain board members insisted we start building up our reserves again, lest we end up in the same boat a few months down the road.  Sixteen grand is nothing when it comes to the total budget.  It might as well be zero.  You can't manage cash flow on a $300MM budget with $16 grand in the bank.  Period.  But while we saw proactivity when it came to the reserves, we didn't hear a tremendous lot about long-term plans for efficiency, reducing costs and addressing the revenue side of the equation.

I'll also bring up two things I'd like to address.  To paraphrase one of the meeting speakers, I doubt these will make me popular.

First, let me say that I get how teacher unions work.  My dad taught for a krillion years at Comsewogue.  We used to get all the NYSUT stuff at home.  I identify with teachers and I get it.  I do value teachers tremendously.  But I will say that the "it's all about the kids" rhetoric coming from the teachers rings a bit hollow when teachers show up solely to represent their self-interest.  To give you an example, when the board made its cuts to clubs, a lone teacher started clapping behind me.  She was immediately glared down by red-shirted teachers sitting around her.  It was almost comical.  And it suggests that she would have continued to applaud that sad compromise, but her teacher buddies reminded her it was a lost pay opportunity for the teachers.  As the board intimated several times, no one likes to make these painful cuts, but if you're going to show up solely to represent your own interests, just cut the bullshit and say that.  There's nothing wrong with coming to a meeting to represent your own interests, but it gives people pause when it's in the guise of "for the kids" and in-meeting behavior reflects something else.

Secondly, I'm a bit concerned that somebody may have misinterpreted some of my comments concerning executive session on Sachem Moms.  Read the law, please.  (Section 105)  When I raised the issue in a thread on Sachem Moms, it was because I was listening to the audio recording of a prior meeting, and I thought the reason I heard on the recording that was used to justify the board adjourning to Executive Session wasn't particularly valid.  At this meeting, though, when the board went into Executive Session, the reason it gave was specific, clear and wouldn't cause a reasonable person to believe the board was discussing another matter that ought to be discussed in the open.  So I'm worried somebody misinterpreted what I said and opted to act on it.  Hopefully not.  I was out of the room and taking a walk in the much-cooler hallway when this happened, but my wife filled me in when I got back.

Anyway, I'm hoping to be more involved in the goings-on of the school district.  I'm just not sure what that level of involvement can be at this point.  Realistically, I work in the city and commute for over four hours per day.  I'm not home enough during the week to be able to volunteer for things, run for positions or make large time commitments that might take me away from my business.  To the extent my very capable wife has time, though, I know she'll maybe be able to take some good ideas to the community.  I'm looking forward to that.

Blind Faith

It is the time of year when I need to (again) explain my broad pronouncement that the Yankees are winning the World Series.

You might see it in my Facebook status, or as a comment on someone else's post, or I might just look you right in the eye and say it - "The Yankees are winning the World Series this year."

And, of course, people will line up with all sorts of analysis, counter-arguments and whatnot - all researched at length - to support the idea that no, the Yankees are NOT winning the World Series this year.  To which I will respond "The Yankees are winning the World Series this year."

You see, I'm trolling you.  Not without good reason, mind you.  It's to show you how frustrating it is to argue with someone who takes things on blind faith.  You know, those people who will argue with you about God or politics or business, armed with nothing but gut feel.  Nothing you say will change their minds because they're not basing their conclusions on facts.

Blind faith is dangerous when we're talking about religious beliefs that influence laws or in unbending principles of government that are immune to compromise.  But if you want to have blind faith in a sports team, that's not going to do much except rub certain people the wrong way.  So I figure that if I'm going to have blind faith in something, it's going to be the New York Yankees, my favorite sports team of all time.  You can tell me that the Yankees have gaps in pitching, or in the infield, or that they're not going to be able to adapt to not having a dominant closer.  You can offer me whatever thought-out piece of baseball analysis you feel like offering up.  I don't care.  The Yankees are winning the World Series this year.

The Yankees could pull Oscar Gamble out of retirement to play center field and it won't matter. The Yankees are winning the World Series this year.

The entire roster could get busted for shooting horse tranquilizers, and I won't care.  The Yankees are winning the World Series this year.

They could sign Dave Mustaine to a $115M deal and give him the first spot in the rotation.  The Yankees are winning the World Series this year.