Port Jervis City Council Adopts 2.5 Percent Tax Levy Increase for 2025

The city hall of Port Jervis, New York, on Sept. 5, 2022. Cara Ding/The Epoch Times

Port Jervis City Council on Dec. 9 unanimously approved a budget for 2025, with a tax levy increase of around $200,000, or 2.5 percent.

The total budget stands at $22.5 million, up by $532,000 from that of the current year.

Average homeowners with no value-altering property improvements or downgrades will see a modest property tax increase of less than a dollar per thousand dollars in assessed house value, according to a tax rate schedule attached to the newly adopted budget.

In other words, the city property tax on a single-family house with an assessed value of $50,000 will increase by around $40 in the coming year.

The city has not conducted a municipal-wide reassessment since 1989, according to the latest record maintained by the state’s Department of Taxation and Finance.

For average business owners, their tax rate, or taxes owed per thousand dollars of assessed value, has decreased by nearly 4 percent, meaning many will see a modest reduction in their city tax bills for 2025.

That is a direct result of a growing business tax roll in Port Jervis, which includes the continued revitalization of vacant downtown shops and new special franchise charges to utility companies and others, according to city assessor Teresa Spradling in an interview.

From 2024 to 2025, the city’s assessed value for business properties and residences with four units or more increased by more than $4 million.

In a Dec. 11 interview with The Epoch Times, Mayor Dominic Cicalese said the city has tried its best to hold in tax increases in the face of increased employee expenses under obligated union contracts and more expensive fuels and supplies due to inflation.

“The department heads were very modest with their budget requests,“ Cicalese said. ”They understood that we didn’t want to hammer the taxpayers, and they honestly kept their spending in line.”

The budget does see a new in-house information technology position, which Cicalese said will help the city cope with the growing cybersecurity challenges.

Neither the mayoral position nor the city council posts get a raise next year.

Veteran city councilman Stanley Siegal said at the meeting following the budget vote: “I am glad to be able to have voted ‘yes’—my third time in 21 years [on the council] ... 2.5 percent [tax increase] is a doable amount of money.

“I would like to thank the mayor, councilman-at-large, and all those people who were involved in the budget this year.”

Following the budget vote, Cicalese thanked Stacey Hosking, the new city treasurer and clerk, for her professionalism during his first budget cycle as mayor.

As for new initiatives in 2025, Cicalese highlighted to the publication the anticipated upgrade and expansion of the municipal water plant with millions of dollars of incoming state grants.