The Rest of the story!

One last telling it like it really is!

It’s Thursday 12/11/2025-the place is the Legislative chambers of the Oswego County legislature.

Information was presented by chairman of the Legislative body.

First was the salary increase for certain elected officials, being voted on. The chairman made a comparison of the Oswego County legislature pay and that of Onondaga county. Pointing out that in Onondaga county a Legislator makes $39,794 a year, compared to the salary of a Oswego County Legislator’s salary of $17,000. He even sent me a text trying to prove his point revealing a news story from Syracuse.com. When he asked me if I was reading it and if I believed now what he was saying. “I said I would have to check and see if this was fake news”. Now just prior to this reveal of the news story I was told to believe, the sheriff was heard saying we must stop believing everything we saw in the news. One says it’s not true, the other says it’s a fact.

Oh well!

Here is the rest of the story. In Onondaga county there is a population of 476,516 compared to Oswego County of 117,525. Onondaga county has 17 legislators; Oswego County has 25. If the news story is in fact true, Onondaga county pays their legislature $39,794 a year each. I asked “how many people does each legislator represent” I didn’t get an ans. Here is the answer. They represent 28,030.  The cost of these 17 legislators is $428,091. If you want to compare let’s do it all the way. If the Oswego County legislature represented 28,030 each, we would only need 5 legislators. Giving us a total cost of $198,970. Saving the taxpayers around $229,121 per year.

Now I know someone will say “Oswego County is much more RURAL” I know that and I would never try and compare us to Onondaga County, the Chairman did, not me. So that is why I did “APPLES TO APPLES”.

Also, they have term limits and also a 4 yr. term.

I say let’s do it.

Now let’s go to the comparison chart for taxes.

Praising the fact that the hard work of this legislative body and how they had lowered the Generic Tax rate again. I pointed out the reason the Generic Tax rate had been lowered was the raising of the assessed value of the county by over half a Billion Dollars. Which in turn lowers the Generic Tax rate by increasing the value of our homes. Which in turn means we will pay more in taxes. So, in fact sir you have again played a “Smoke and Mirrors trick” to get more money out of the taxpayers.

Now in his nice slide show he compared his house to a house in Fulton. Showing how over the years the taxes have only gone up by very little. My wife even got a chuckle out of it when I asked to use my house as a comparison. That is when he revealed the house in Fulton was mine.  Now that was funny, but it helped me prove my point…

Well let’s look at the full picture.

In the 2014 my house was assessed at $50,000 with a county tax rate of $7.69 per thousand, for a total of $384.70. Now in the 2025 my house went up to $75,000 assessed value. A jump of 50% increased value. My county tax rate went down to $6.23. A decrease of 19%. How ever my county taxes went up to $476.36. An increase of 24% in County taxes. One must ask “Where is the Generic tax rate you keep talking about” So, in reality Sir, you gained 24% in taxes by using the increase in assessed value. While giving yourself and other elected officials over 29% salary increases.

Please Sir, don’t say I should be happy with an increase of 24% over 12 yrs. My Social Security didn’t go up by 24% to help pay your increase.

So now you know the rest of the story!

For one last time, goodbye and God bless!

Frank Castiglia jr.

Oswego county Legislator 25^th District

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