Firearms code, tax breaks for volunteer firefighters focus of new bills

Head of the Harbor trustees will vote Wednesday after hearings on bills that would exempt fire and ambulance company volunteers serving the village from some property taxes and amend village code's definition of firearms to permit bowhunting, Mayor Douglas Dahlgard said.

The tax bill, similar to those in a number of other Long Island municipalities, would exempt 10% of the assessed value of a volunteer’s home from his or her village tax bill. The exemption would be capped at about $3,360, or $3,000 multiplied by the New York State property tax equalization rate for the village.

The village early last year joined the St. James Fire District, which had provided its fire and emergency services protection under contract for decades. District officials did not say Tuesday how many village residents are department members. Dahlgard said no more than a handful of residents in the 525-home village have joined the department, meaning the tax burden shifted to other residents is not likely to be great.

Loss of revenue is "always a consideration," Dahlgard said, but "it’s the right thing to do."

Robert Leonard, spokesman for the Firefighters Association of the State of New York, described exemptions as a helpful tool to attract and keep volunteers on the force. "We believe investment in tax credits and modest fringe benefits more than pay back dividends," he said.

The code amendment would hand a win to deer hunters by striking bows from a list of firearms that cannot legally be discharged in the village. It comes after the state’s highest appeals court, hearing a case initially brought by a hunters’ advocacy group against Smithtown, earlier this year ruled that the town could not regulate bows under an ordinance that lumped them together with guns in the firearms category.

Bowhunters shooting down from tree stands account for many of the 3,000 deer taken each year in Suffolk County under state Department of Environmental Conservation rules that permit bowhunting with setback and other regulations.

Hunting is contentious in the village, which has a troublesome deer population but also a contingent of human residents who call the practice barbaric. Trustees in 2015 dropped a proposal to lift a decades-old ban on hunting amid resident opposition. The village is participating in an experimental deer contraception program, which some residents have criticized as ineffective.

"We have to go along with the court," Dahlgard said. "I don’t think there’s going to be a major change in public safety."