This is the time of year that beckons for a “list” column. I considered honoring the reader with a brief description of my 10 best golf shots of 2024. But even after consulting with my regular playing partners, I could come up with only four shots worthy of mention, two of which involved tee shots that ricocheted from tree limbs into the fairway. Next up was a list of my 10 best newspaper columns as rated by my family members. But they were all too busy.

Nothing depresses a newspaper columnist (even an amateur one) more than the frustration of seeing every idea trail leading to the same sign: Dead End. Perhaps this explains the seemingly odd compulsion to congratulate the executive director of the Seneca County Industrial Development Agency. Odd in that Executive Director Sarah Davis was portrayed in a recent FL Times article as being a bit discouraged at having provided financial aid to only one business in 2024. In IDA parlance, financial aid generally means property tax breaks (with a side order of sales tax and mortgage recording tax exemptions).

Even the best New Year’s resolution for 2025 will not change the grim reality that one property owner’s tax breaks become part of another property owner’s tax bills. This occasions a perhaps silly question. If the property taxes in a given jurisdiction are so onerous that a business (or, at least, a business blessed by the local IDA) cannot succeed without substantial relief from those taxes, might that indicate that the taxes are overly burdensome? If so, perhaps the problem needs to be addressed on behalf of all property owners rather than on behalf of a few favored petitioners.

Of course, IDAs, as has been obvious for approximately the dozen years of my Inquiring Taxpayer experience, look at things quite differently than I do. Thus, the Ontario County IDA likely takes pride in the fact that for fiscal year 2023, it sponsored/funded/favored/incentivized 50 projects to the tune of $7,687,942.50 in net property tax exemptions. We might speculate that various school districts and municipalities simply reduced their budgets by that amount. Or we might entertain the bizarre idea that other property owners, including multiple small business owners, made up for that $7.687 million of property tax avoidance. I invite you to pause before moving breathlessly to the next paragraph and to make your best guess as to which of those two possibilities is more likely.

The thought occurs that there may be many ways for communities and agencies to enhance the prospects of new, or continuing, businesses. The heavy reliance on property tax breaks for a selected few businesses strikes me as one of the most unimaginative, untransparent, and unfair methods possible. That said, the occasional use of tax relief as a last-gasp effort to salvage a parcel of land might not be totally offensive. An example involves the abandoned Labelon industrial building, an 84,000-square-foot derelict that has moored for two decades just off Main Street in Canandaigua. The city has spent a good deal of time and effort getting the property de-contaminated and attempting, unsuccessfully, to woo a developer.

All PILOTs (payment in lieu of taxes) are not created equal. Even the Inquiring Taxpayer might find it hard to wage a full-throated (albeit perhaps a squeak or two) attack on a PILOT that might salvage the blighted former Labelon property. It is an entirely different matter trying to justify the sizable property tax breaks given to the two upscale hotels on the north shore of Canandaigua Lake. They received a sweet $1.5 million (and change) in net property tax exemptions for 2023. Bear in mind that the average homeowner in Canandaigua is not likely to book a weekend stay at the Lake House, whose rates make the Belhurst Castle in Geneva look like economy lodging. Another perhaps silly question: Why is that homeowner being required to subsidize the property taxes of the billionaire Lake House owners?

Even the most generous supporter of “economic development” (a monster of a euphemism when used to mean needless tax breaks) would be hard-pressed to explain why Eastview Mall, owned by property giant Wilmorite Properties, was allowed to skate on $1.127 million in property taxes for 2023. In many positive ways the Mall is an emblem of capitalism, promoting a vibrant free market exchange between consumers and merchants. Those consumers, whose spending includes considerable amounts of state and local sales taxes, should not be compelled to subsidize so much as one penny of the Mall’s taxes.

The Geneva IDA report for 2023 shows net exemptions totaling $2,547,345. Not being a Geneva resident, I’m not familiar with the extent to which the local PILOTs are of near vital necessity (a la Labelon) or of the “need it to make a nice profit” variety (a la most every PILOT).

What I, and you, are familiar with is the hard truth that local property owners were pummeled with unusually large assessment increases last year. Despite weak attempts to downplay the impact of reassessment on tax bills, reality is beginning to dawn. Many a homeowner, struggling to pay rising city, school, and county tax bills would love to exchange that 30-year mortgage for a 30-year PILOT. That being a fantasy, the homeowner deserves to know that every dollar of tax break is serving a vital community interest rather than mostly serving the bottom line and salaries of the recipients.

So that’s that. Any IDA members, and those who support the PILOT industry, reading this may not be pleased. People who don’t pay property taxes (“Not my concern”) may have stopped reading long ago. In fact, even those who have persevered might well be thinking, “I really wish that he had made 10 good golf shots.”

Longtime Canandaigua resident Joe Nacca taught English at Finger Lakes Community College for 30 years.

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