The City of Tonawanda got slammed a couple years ago when Hoyt had the Erie Canal designation moved to the city of Buffalo. It cost the Tonawandas over a million in Federal aid. Now this? Could this be payback for the election when I was running against her and the Mayor accused her of not living in her district?

The way she views her town of Kenmore and the City of Tonawanda is really twisted. Kenmore is a village with it’s own system of government that honestly should be consolidated into the Town of Tonawanda. I do think Kevin Gaughn suggested that in the way to shrink the sizes of government and so many elected officials. Something stinks about this whole thing and if it is political payback who gets hurt? The people that live in the City, not just the Mayor who will have to do something about the finances.

Tonawanda News - ERIE COUNTY: Change to tax revenue could hurt city

The City of Tonawanda stands to lose $1 million of revenue per year if a proposal being touted by a local member of the Erie County Legislature gains approval from state leaders.

Appearing earlier this week before the county Legislature’s Finance and Management Committee, Tonawanda Mayor Ron Pilozzi argued that the county’s three cities would be drastically impacted by a plan authored by Legislator Michelle Iannello, D-Kenmore, to redistribute the way sales tax revenue is shared with Tonawanda, Buffalo and Lackawanna.

Based on an agreement that has been in place since 1977, the county’s three cities receive 10.008 percent of the local 3 percent share of Erie’s sales tax revenue. Were that to be abandoned, Tonawanda would lose $1.1 million, or 5.7 percent of its annual operating budget, Pilozzi told the committee.

“Tonawanda would be either forced to cut vital public services or raise city taxes by approximately 13 percent, placing additional stress on its state 2 percent constitutional taxing limit,” he added.

The resolution, which Iannello’s colleagues passed last month, asks Gov. David Paterson and the State Legislature to re-examine the formula for determining state aid for municipalities to make it more fair to New York’s 279 villages, including Kenmore.

“Demographically and geographically, they are very similar,” Iannello said of the City of Tonawanda and Kenmore, whose populations are 14,931 and 15,123, respectively, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimate. “The current formula gave the City of Tonawanda $2.6 million in 2007-2008 and the Village of Kenmore $651,000,” Iannello said.

Her resolution calls on state officials to revise the revenue sharing criteria to “focus less on what a municipality is called, but (more) on the services it provides, the needs of the residents and the economic factors surrounding the municipality.”