Ex-NHL Owner Refuses to Pay Taxes Over Goose Droppings on His Lawn

An ex-NHL owner is in a rather sticky situation.

Tom Golisano, a billionaire and former owner of the Buffalo Sabres, is refusing to pay his local taxes, after taking a stand over the amount of goose poo left on the lawn of his upstate New York property.

Golisano, 76, is refusing to pay the $90,000 he owes until local officials deal with the problem at his summer home on Canandaigua Lake, South Bristol.

“This past summer it was horrible. We’d drive in and find 100 to 200 geese parked on our lawn,” the tycoon told the Associated Press.

“You can’t walk barefoot, can’t play Frisbee, can’t have your grandchildren run around,” he added. “Here I am paying all this money in taxes and I can’t use my property because of the geese droppings.”

The town supervisor, Daniel Marshall, disagrees with Golisano. He told the AP that the goose droppings were “a resident’s problem to take care of, not the town’s.”

“It is a lake, after all,” he added.

Golisano, founder of the payroll firm Paychex, has a net worth of $3.4 billion. He previously launched a legal battle over the property taxes on a home he owns in Mendon, near Rochester, N.Y., reducing them in 2010 from $200,000 to $60,000.