Turd is the word: Doo-doo gooses property tax fight

Billionaire Tom Golisano says he tried stringing up fishing line, spraying smelly repellent and even posting a wolf decoy, but nothing could rid his lakeside vacation home of the Canada geese that turned his lawn into a minefield of poop.

His next line of attack? Refusing to pay his $90,000 school tax bill until officials in the Finger Lakes town of South Bristol find a way to control the birds.

“This past summer it was horrible. We’d drive in and find 100 to

200 geese parked on our lawn,” said Golisano, founder of payroll company Paychex and former owner of the Buffalo Sabres hockey team. “You can’t walk barefoot, can’t play Frisbee, can’t have your grandchildren run around. … Here I am paying all this money in taxes and I can’t use my property because of the geese droppings.”

Golisano’s stand over bird poop is just one part of his one-man protest campaign against a taxation system he believes is flawed and inequitable.

He’s pledging to file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of other upstate homeowners who believe they are being overtaxed.

Town Supervisor Daniel Marshall disagrees.

“It’s a resident’s problem to take care of, not the town’s,” he said. Marshall said no other shoreline residents have complained about the geese. “It is a lake, after all.”

New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation recommends numerous ways to shoo off the geese, including those Golisano has tried. When it’s a community-wide problem, the DEC suggests local officials may want to hire a “goose control officer” and devise a coordinated control plan. That’s what Golisano wants.

For now, the tax fight remains unresolved. Golisano says his next step is to seek a reduced property assessment based on the goose scourge.