CONVICT MAYOR ERNIE DAVIS AND COMPTROLLER MAUREEN WALKER SET TO APPROVE 10.4% TAX INCREASE

CONVICTED CRIMINAL MAYOR ERNIE DAVIS

CORRUPT COMTROLLER MAUREEN WALKER

At a time when prices at the pump are falling, taxes in Mt. Vernon are set to rise by double digits if Mayor Davis and Comptroller Walker get their way. Three members of the Council - Griffith Apuzzo and Edwards - are also on board as rubber stamps to approve an effective 10.4 % tax hike for 2015.

Find time to attend the Council hearing on December 23 at 7pm to voice your outrage about the city taking the jingle out of your pocket! 

This is your chance to fight for what's in your wallet! Tell a friend and neighbor to join the demand for a tax refund! 

Mount Vernon’s Mayor, Comptroller, and some members of the City Council, are taxing Mount Vernon into financial ruins. If the proposed 2015 budget is passed, Mount Vernon will be hit with a double-digit tax increase. With this increase, Mayor Davis, and Comptroller Maureen Walker would have raised city taxes 30.6% in four years. 

Mount Vernon is one of the only cities in New York State that has opted out of the 2% or less tax cap, and has done so, 4 years in a row. The casualties of this destructive taxing behavior can be seen throughout the City of Mount Vernon. Property values have tumbled, common everyday services are not being provided, houses are crumbling, and homeowners are losing their homes in record numbers.

While citizens struggle to stay afloat, Mayor Davis refused to pay on his personal and property taxes. Mayor Davis by his own admission, has pleaded guilty on 2 misdemeanors which makes him a known criminal and faces incarceration in Federal prison, when he is sentenced on January 26^th.

Mayor Davis has solicited residents to send letters to the sentencing Judge on his behalf, asking for leniency. However, he and Comptroller Walker have shown no leniency to residents who fall behind on their property taxes. Davis and Walker have foreclosed on a record number of taxpayers in the past 3 years. Sources have reported that personal friends of Maureen Walker have purchased foreclosed homes for little or nothing, while evicted Grandmothers were not offered a payment plan in order to stay in the their homes. They were thrown out in the streets.

Mayor Davis and Maureen Walker are asking for a 4.5%, 2015 tax increase. What he and Comptroller Walker are hiding from the public, is that Mount Vernon’s Library has been removed from the city budget, and is now a separate tax. Four Million, three hundred and fifty thousand ($4,350,000) comes off the city books. That was 5.9% of last year’s City budget, which should now be refunded to taxpayers. Although the library budget came off the city books, and should reduce city taxes, Ernie Davis and Maureen Walker proposed a 2015 tax increase. If you add the proposed 4.5% tax increase to the separate 5.9% library tax, you will realize that taxpayers will be paying 10.4% more in taxes next year. Davis and Walker are trying to keep the citizens in the dark.

Tax increases in the last 4 years under Ernie Davis and Maureen Walker, are 2012 (7.8%), 2013 (6.2%), 2014 (6.2%), and 2015 (10.4%). Therefore, our Mayor and Comptroller have hit the people of Mount Vernon with a whopping 30.6% increase in the last 4 years.

The 2015 proposed budget, consist of increases in pension cost. Pension cost is tied to the stock market performances 5 years prior to the budget year. Pension cost for 2015 should decrease, because of the rise in stock equities in 2010. It should continue to decrease for years to come, because the stock market has increased each of the last 5 years, and is in record territory. The 2015 budget also comprises of raises for Commissioners, and spending for unnecessary projects. Meanwhile, services in Mount Vernon continue to go down.

City Council members, Yuhanna Edwards and Roberta Apuzzo have voted for obscene tax increases, four years in a row. Marcus Griffith has voted for unnecessary tax increases, two years in a row. Since Comptroller Maureen Walker has taken office in 1992, she has never provided a solution to bring the budget down to an acceptable level. Comptroller Walker, the financial watchdog of Mount Vernon, has turned her back on the people of this city. She has remained silent while Mount Vernon taxpayers are being fleeced. Mount Vernon has the highest foreclosures and the worse ratio of taxes to property values in the State of New York.  Maureen Walker is the Comptroller and financial watchdog of a hemorrhaging city. Her performance is embarrassing, and she should resign.

Mount Vernon is in trouble. Some of our elected officials are driving its residents into financial ruins. We have a Mayor who may go to jail, a Comptroller who has joined forces with him to raid the coffers, and some City Council Members who are not protecting our city. Ernie Davis and Maureen Walker were elected to look after the best interest of Mount Vernon, but have pushed it to the brink of disaster.