Word: hardenburgh
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...past four years, furious homeowners forced the city council in July to pass acts that exempt the aged, blind and disabled from some of the increases, and to lop $6,000 off the assessed value of every single-family house. In the upstate New York hamlet of Hardenburgh, residents have dodged the assessor by joining a California mail-order outfit called the "Universal Life Church" and declaring their homes to be churches; they qualify for an exemption on the basis of the U.S. Constitution, which has been interpreted to prohibit the taxation of religious property...
...Hardenburgh, N. Y., a pastoral sanctuary in the Catskill Mountains only 100 miles north of Manhattan, may be one of the most ostensibly religious towns in the U.S. According to the applications for exemption from the tax rolls, at least 82% of the community's 236 residents claim to be ministers in the California-based Universal Life Church...
...many of Hardenburgh's sheep suddenly decide to become shepherds? It was certainly cheap and easy enough-the U.L.C. ordains ministers for $2 down and $2 a month (TIME. Feb. 10, 1975)-but that does not account for the mass ordination. The turn to religion is a protest against the fact that more than a sixth of the town's 84 sq. mi. were already owned by several tax-exempt religious groups (Zen Buddhists, Tibetan monks) and one educational group (the Center for Conservation). That left taxpayers bearing huge burdens to support their local roads and schools...
What is to be gained by such a transparent attempt to fend off the tax collector with the Bible? Hardenburgh's residents figure that dramatizing the absurdity of the situation will bring relief in the form of less generous exemption laws. Declares Town Supervisor Lester Bourke: "We are seeking salvation...
...Hardenburgh is also taking the spring tennis season off, but both should be back again next fall. In the meantime. Radcliffe's doubles teams of Rita Funaro and Suki Magraw as well as Maude wood and Anne Kaufman had an easy time...