County checks web, answers ferry query

As requested by Supervisor Jim Dougherty, County Legislator Ed Romaine got an answer from the legislature’s Budget Review Office (BRO) last week to the supervisor’s inquiry about how North Ferry defines a resident when it comes to selling resident-only fares.

He made the request because, he said at a Town Board work session on November 29, two renters had complained to the town’s Ferry Advisory Committee that they had been denied resident passes because they were renters and could not produce a property tax bill. The supervisor declined to identify the complainants.

Gail Vizzini, director of the non-partisan BRO, responded to Mr. Romaine’s inquiry in a December 9 memo indicating a resident can be a renter and does not have to be a property owner. As a reference, she cited North Ferry’s own web page as well as past correspondence the BRO has had with company officials.

“Residents will qualify if they have a Shelter Island address on their driver’s license, pay Shelter Island town property taxes, or hold a lease on a Shelter Island dwelling for 10 months or greater,” she wrote, quoting from the company web site.

The president of North Ferry, Paul McDowell, wrote in a letter to the editor last week that North Ferry had not changed its policies to exclude renters from resident fares. He quoted from the tariff filing the company submitted to the county for its last rate increase, which includes the definition of a resident as a property owner, someone with an Island address on the driver’s license, or a renter with at least a 10-month lease.

Ferry manager Bridg Hunt commented Tuesday that officials did not know who the complainants were or why they had been told they did not qualify for resident rates. He said if someone on the staff had erred in telling them they had to be property owners “we’d be eager to make it up to them.”

Ferry rates are set by the legislature after a review by the BRO.