The Village of Kensington Board of Trustees voted last week to require residents to maintain municipal land near their homes.
After a public hearing on the “Peace and Good Order” portion of village code, the board of trustees unanimously approved a measure during its regular meeting at Village Hall, which would make residents liable for the upkeep of municipal reserve strips near their homes.
“We’ve found that over the years people have planted things there, have sheds, all kinds of stuff,” Village of Kensington Mayor Susan Lopatkin said. “Even though it’s our land, we can’t really be in the position of having to take care of this because we haven’t been controlling what’s going on there.”
According to village code, reserve strips are defined as portions of land that run either behind or to the side of residents’ property. These strips of land can be anywhere from six- to 10-feet long and are used by the village for a variety of reasons.
“It’s land that’s owned by the municipality that is reserved for the use of utilities or whatever other purposes the town needs,” Lopatkin said. “We just needed to amend our law so that the residents would be taking care of that from here on in.”
The board of trustees also took another proactive measure by introducing a local law to override the state’s tax levy limit.
“We have sent our village clerk to seminars,” Lopatkin said. “There have been Webinars. There’s been all kinds of information from the state describing how to calculate that tax levy because it’s not as clear cut as it seems.”
The state Legislature recently passed a law, which restricts the ability for villages and other local governing bodies to raise taxes. The current tax cap is set at 2 percent.
Many municipalities are taking similar measures with the inception of local ordinances to protect against issues with the tax cap, Lopatkin said.
“You don’t want to be in violation of the law,” she said. “It’s more prophylactic than anything because no one really knows all of the ins and outs that go into this calculation.”
The board is scheduled to vote on the law at its next board meeting on Dec. 21 at 8 p.m.
“We have no intentions of having an over 2 percent rise in our taxes,” Lopatkin said. “This is simply a measure to protect the village in the event that some inadvertent problem that rises that we didn’t know about in the final calculations.”
