Brewer highlights wasted resources and 42,000 exemption applications

Not only does this create a burden for taxpaying New Yorkers, but now finance needs to spend time and resources processing every application for an abatement

and collecting and verifying documentation that already has collected and verifying, in my opinion,

Wasting public resources.

So far, nearly 42,000

property owners have applied for or in the process of applying for an exemption to tax because either they are using the property as their primary residence or because they are eligible for some other exemption.

Both the mayor and finance commissioner Richard Lee, for whom we have great respect,

have already acknowledged that the records that they were using to identify properties subject to the tax were outdated and that they knew when they posted the initial list that it included a large number of properties that would not be subject to the tax.

I think we all want to know why the city published a list that it knew was not accurate.

Like many of my constituents, I have a lot of questions about this tax that we are hoping to get answers to.

I do want to thank the council staff members who made this possible, from Government Operations Committee, Johari Frazier, Erica Cohen, and Sigma Hamid, and from the Finance Committee, Brian Sarfo and Owen Kotowski,

and Cynthia Hornick from my office and everybody else.