Potsdam and Canton

A comparison is made of property taxes and general fund expenditures for the villages of Potsdam and Canton.

Budget data is from the 2009-2010 adopted budgets.  Population data is from US Census data and the corrections made by Yurgartis for incorrect counting of students.

Potsdam village
		Property	General	Property tax/	General fund/
	Population	tax levy	fund	capita	capita
Full time residents only	4851	$2,608,041	$5,744,769	$538	$1,184
Census count	9425	$2,608,041	$5,744,769	$277	$610
FT residents + all students	12228	$2,608,041	$5,744,769	$213	$470
Students only	7377
Fraction students	60%
Canton village
		Property	General	Property tax/	General fund/
	Population	tax levy	fund	capita	capita
Full time residents only	3757	$1,690,907	$2,997,420	$450	$798
Census count	5882	$1,690,907	$2,997,420	$287	$510
FT residents + all students	6902	$1,690,907	$2,997,420	$245	$434
Students only	3145
Fraction students	46%
Ratios
General fund/capita ratios
CantonFT/PotsdamFT	0.67
CantonAll/PotsdamAll	0.92
Property tax/capita ratios
CantonFT/PotsdamFT	0.84
CantonAll/PotsdamAll	1.15

Both Canton and Potsdam are "college towns". Once again the data shows the difficulty of running a village with a high proportion of temporary residents.

Since it tends to be full time residents who pay property taxes, a comparison of the full time per capita property tax is interesting.  In this case Canton's rate is 84% of Potsdam's rate.  However, if the comparison is based on the amount of property tax that must be levied to support the entire population (full time + students) it is seen that Canton collects about 15% more than Potsdam. 

The general fund of each community is the money spent to provide basic public services such as snowplowing, road repair, police, fire, and recreation.  It excludes water and sewer expenses; these are charged separately to users on an as-used basis. A comparison of the general fund expenditures is thus a measure of how much a municipality is spending to provide its general services.  Since all residents (full time + students) are typically served by general fund expenditures, it is reasonable to compare the per capita costs based on all residents.  Canton's rate is $434/resident, Potsdam's is $470/resident.  Canton is about 8% less than Potsdam.  Caution is needed in this comparison since the level of services is not identical.

Also worth noting in these comparisons is that Canton's population is about 46% students, Potsdam's population is about 60% students.

Conclusions

The data shows that Canton does have a lower property tax burden compared to Potsdam (about 16% less for the full time residents, on whom the burden falls).  Such a difference is likely, in part, due to Canton's smaller student fraction compared to Potsdam.  In other words, Potsdam property tax payers must support a greater number of non-payers.

The data also shows that Potsdam spends less (15%) property tax per resident served, suggesting that Potsdam has been able to find more of "other" revenue sources to supplement general fund revenues.  It is not yet clear what these other sources are, but one obvious source is the hydroelectric income of Potsdam.

The data also shows that Canton is spending about 8% less in general fund services per resident than Potsdam.  The data does not support the claim that Canton runs a village on a lot less money than Potsdam.  However, it is less, and warrants further study to see where the differences lay. I am working on that.