Village tackles tax exemption registrations

Warwick — The Village Board started out Monday night to clarify the procedure on its books to register for tax exemptions. For example, seniors, veterans, farmers, and volunteers — they have to come to both the Village Clerk’s office and to the assessor’s office at Town Hall to register or the exemptions. What they ended with was a fact-finding mission on how to streamline the process and make half the work for their constituents. “We are not being responsive to our constituents,” Trustee George McManus said. “We use the same assessor as the town. We should be able to file once with the assessor.” Seniors who make less than $26,900, veterans, farmers, and now firefighters and volunteer ambulance workers who wish to take advantage of the town and village tax exemptions must register with both the town and village each year. Board members, though, decided that shouldn’t necessarily be. “Either file here and we notify them or file there and they can notify us,” McManus said. “We have the same guy doing the assessment.” The town’s fiscal year runs from January to December while the village’s is from June to May, making filing deadlines different. Nevertheless, the obstacles do not seem insurmountable. Roger Metzger, the village’s liaison with the town, said he would look into meeting with town officials to work it out. “I will talk to (the assessor) and see if we can coordinate this,” Metzger said.