At the Town Board’s special budget meeting on Monday evening, November 17, Republican Town Board member Bobbi Eagan pulled a bottle of Champagne from her bag and placed it on the table. She then proclaimed that the taxpayers of Milan could afford a 40 percent tax increase if they would only stop drinking all that expensive Champagne.  

No, this isn’t a satire—I was there and it really happened. According to Bobbi, it’s your fault that you aren’t happy with the 40 percent property tax increase proposed by her, Republican Board member David Byrne, and Republican Supervisor Dick Barrett. At one point in the meeting, Bobbi dismissed the concerns of the citizens who spoke out against a massive tax increase at the public hearing on November 6. According to her, their opinions don’t matter.  

When the 2009 budget process began, the first proposal from the three Republican Board members was for a 66.3 percent increase. (You may recall that these very same people knocked on your door in the fall of 2007 and told you how they would save the Town of Milan and keep taxes down.)

Democratic Board member Ross Williams told his Republican colleagues that their proposal was completely unacceptable. Over their objections, he began working to find ways to keep the tax increase as low as possible. He asked his colleagues for their input. Bobbi Egan’s one tax-cutting idea was to do away with the senior citizen picnic--a $250 savings (didn’t pass). Take that, you Champagne-guzzling seniors!

The back and forth continued until the three Republicans decided that a 40 percent increase was the best they could do for the Town. They changed their minds after the public hearing on November 6. While the Republicans did the bare minimum to inform the public about the hearing—and didn’t make the draft budget available on the Town website—the Milan Democrats helped Ross Williams mail out an explanation of the problem and a notice of the public hearing. Only after seeing some hundred residents come out on a weeknight with very short notice did the Republicans finally realize that their huge tax increase was not exactly popular. They finally began to listen to the ideas of Ross Williams and Democratic Board member Diane May.

The tax increase is now down to 15.4 percent, thanks to the hard work Ross and Diane did. The increase would have been even lower, but the three Republican Board members added items to the budget during the adoption meeting.

What about the 2008 budget as the year draws to a close?
Not only has the budget drafted by Democratic former Supervisor Van Talmage come in as written, there’s money left over to move into next year. You were told by the Republicans that Milan was awash in red ink from lawsuits and that only a massive tax increase could save us. They were wrong—again.

Bill May

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