- By Dan Veaner
- Around Town
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Mike SiglerIt has been six months since Mike Sigler started his first term as a County legislator, representing the Town of Lansing. Much has gone on this year and we felt it was time to check in with him to talk about some of the issues the County is facing, and how he is representing the Town.He agreed to meet at Collegetown Bagels on his way to a County Board meeting. There he talked about taxes and spending, being in the minority party on the Board, development and more.
Lansing Star: How's it going so far?
Mike Sigler: It's going great. We found a lot of common ground with a lot of the people on the Legislature. Yeah, it's an 11 (Democrat) - 4 (Republican) split. A lot of people on the Board have level heads. They know what they're looking to do.
Granted, other ones -- they bring up issues that I don't know why we talk about. Tonight we'll be debating the NSA wire tap program. I don't know why we're doing that. But if you bring it up I have to pick a side and I have to explain why I'm picking that side. And that's a pretty complicated issue! (laughs)
LS: What projected result is the Board discussing it for?
MS: Well, that's just it. We're going to tell the Bush administration, well, we're either against this program or we're for it. OK, why are we not concentrating on the $41 million dollar budget, or our local share of the budget? We want to do this council of governments. We're looking for bylaws. It seems like a better allocation of our resources, but -- we'll see.
LS: Have you had any surprises since you started?
MS: Yes, I was surprised that some of the people on the board -- not that they were conservative -- but I felt like Kathy Luz Herrera voted for a zero percent tax levy increase, and that surprised me. So a lot of the people were more fiscally conservative, I think, than I gave them credit for.
Tim Joseph, I think, runs a great meeting. We obviously disagree on things like reallocation of wealth and things like that. However, when it comes down to local government he runs a good meeting. He hears both sides. So I give him credit for that.
LS: What do you think the key challenges are for this year?
MS: I think it's the same. It's money. I think we spend too much money. You see that like in the state of New Jersey right now where they shut the government down. Instead of saying how can we cut this budget they said, well we want to increase the tax rate. This is a perfect example of what's going on in New York State.
Whereas people say, well we should rely more on the income tax. I look at them like, that would have been great to say years ago, but you already are. You're at seven percent income tax. How much higher are you going to go? Your sales tax is basically as high as you can go.
So all your taxes are the highest in the country. We're a little behind New Jersey property tax-wise, but not by much.
Mike Sigler identified these issues in last November's election:
These were the goals he stated:
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LS: I heard that sales tax revenue was up this year.
MS: Yup, it is. And that's good. Here's what the vote came down to. There were seven people who wanted a zero percent tax levy increase. It would have meant serious cuts, but seven people were for that. The problem is, we couldn't get eight (the majority needed to pass a resolution in the County Legislature). So eight of us then voted for 2.8% tax levy increase, which meant a zero percent tax rate increase.
So at least it's not coming out of everybody's pocket. Although you could make the argument that the assessments went up, so it is going to come out of some peoples' pockets. But at least they're seeing some benefit from that.
I understand what they're saying. They want to see property taxes decrease. Well, this is the best we could do. This was not a choice between a zero percent increase or a 2.8%. This was a choice between a 2.8% tax levey increase or no guidance whatsoever. Maintenance was 5.6% and I have no doubt that that's what it would have come back at, at least. Because why wouldn't it?
LS: That's still below the cost of living. That's what you were asking for in your campaign.
MS: Well we're even doing better now. I mean, now, because sales tax (revenue) went up as you mentioned, the tax rate actually keeps going down, because those numbers keep getting better. So that's good. I mean it would be nice to see a zero percent tax levy increase, because, again, I think it all comes down to spending.
I proposed a resolution on how to cut back on the number or people we have working for the County. This is an example of how hard it is to get things done. It wouldn't have impacted the departments. It wouldn't have laid anybody off. Still, I couldn't get a whole lot of support for it. I got maybe five, six people. It's not enough, you've got to get more.
So hopefully if I can keep working on this with certain people I can get something through in the next year. But it's going to take that long. Just because you have to assuage fears about what's going to happen. I don't want to panic the department heads. I don't want to panic the County employees. It wouldn't have had an impact on them. It would have just earmarked certain programs, which would have been done by the department heads.
And once those were earmarked, we're not cutting them. We're saying we're going to fund them with one-time money and then we're going to phase them out. So it would be good if they started looking at other departments or other jobs within a department. And as people moved out of these programs we would have folded them. Again, I wasn't going to fire anybody. So I don't really understand how people could be against it, but there -- there's your surprise. You always wonder.
And the other side, of course, wonders, how could you not vote against this? Well, there's a lot of reasons. What really brought that out was the assessment. You know, the one year to three year. You had a sharp divide.
LS: That vote was split right down the middle.
MS: It was a sharp divide. I was the only Republican voting for the three year (assessment). So it's interesting that you look at things like that and think, why is the other side voting this way? They're saying that about us. 'Oh, we're going to lose money.' Yeah, we are. I don't want to increase the size of County government. That's why I voted for the three year.
They were calling it a one-year, but it really wasn't a one-year. Everybody wasn't getting an assessment once a year. Commercial properties weren't. Lake properties weren't. A lot of properties weren't. You had to have comparables within that market to actually set a new assessment.
LS: You mean properties that had been sold or built?
MS: Yes, within that area. Something to compare them against, and we didn't have them. So it's great to say you're doing it once a year, but if you're not really doing it I thought it was kind of -- not disingenuous. That's a little harsh. But it wasn't one year. It certainly was more like three year for a lot of different properties.
LS: What about long term issues for the Legislature? When i say 'long term' I mean over the course of your four year term as a legislator?
MS: I'm going to keep working on that growth of government. Right now we have about 735 full time County employees. If we can keep it to that and reduce it as people retire, I think that should be a goal of the County Legislature. Getting other people to believe that on the County Legislature is another thing, but if we can get that done... Because that will really help the budget numbers down the road.
LS: Because that's where a lot of expenditure is, with increases in benefits?
MS: Us doing nothing we add more than a million dollars to the budget. Just doing nothing. Not adding a program. Not increasing funding to programs. Doing nothing! Just through salaries and benefits, more than a million dollars. A million two to a million five. Just sitting there.
When people say, well I want to cut the budget, you can't do that without effecting that. Because what are you going to do, cut a million five out of programs every year? You can't do it. You have to limit the number of people you have working for you.
LS: I guess if you cut it all out of programs eventually the employees would have nothing to do.
MS: You want to pay people a decent wage. You can't do that if you keep getting so big that you don't have any more money. Where else are you going to get it? Y9u either do that or you're going to cut salaries. I don't want to cut salaries. I want to keep the people we have.
And what are you going to do? Cut their salaries? No, of course not. Once they're out of place, they're out of place. That's a union deal, too, so it's untouchable money, almost.
LS: You've partly answered this. Seven new legislators, but still politically unbalanced.
MS: There are four Republicans (out of 15 legislators on the County Board).
LS: One of the things you said in your campaign was that you get along with people.
MS: I think I do.
LS: Is this more of a challenge because it is so uneven?
MS: I think it's always going to be a challenge. I think that it's interesting, too, to see the Democratic splits. They're certainly not walking in lock step at the County level. I mean, if we were to talk a national issue, yeah. Probably all the Democrats besides maybe two or three -- maybe two of them -- would vote one way. But when you get down to real County issues -- it's just smaller. You'll see a lot more of a split.
Another good example would be the assessment. There was a real divide there in the Democratic party. And that's not a bad thing, it's just a thing. And it's good that they can do that and still get along at the end of the day.
But like this NSA wire tap thing that I'm going to debate today -- I don't think I'm going to win anybody over. I personally believe it's legal. I don't necessarily agree with it. I just believe it's legal. Now, I think it's a valuable tool. I'm going to argue all this. I have case law to back it up. It's going to take about 45 minutes.
To what end? I just don't understand.
But you do, you find allies. This proposal that I had to reign in staff levels and keep it at a certain level. Republicans, I got them to go along pretty easily. Now it's a matter of I've got to convince four Democrats to do it. They're there. I think there are four Democrats on the Board right now that I can actually go and talk to who will have an open mind and say, 'You have something here. I don't like this part.' I can work with that. You tell me what you don't like about it.
There's a conservative Democrat on the Board. He's very pro-union. So OK. 'What are your concerns. Your concerns are about the union. How do I work this around that?'
LS: So you're enlisting his help in forming it.
MS: Right, I hope to. Whether I can do that or not is another issue, but I hope to. And the fact of the matter is this proposal wouldn't effect the unions anyway. And that's a locked-in deal. The County legislators really can't mess with those, because this is the deal that they struck. If you're going to try to do different union contracts you've got to do that when you're actually negotiating.
LS: Property taxes. I was looking at Tim Joseph's statement that he made at the beginning of the year when he was reelected Board Chairman, and basically he said that property taxes are too high. He said that the reason is mandates.
MS: No. I mean, yes and no. Some of it does come from mandates. There is no getting around the fact that this year your local share is going up by more than a million dollars. Put mandates to the side for a second. Just looking at that you can't say it's all mandates. It isn't. In the last five years the local share has gone from about $20 million to -- well theis year it's going to be around $41 million. That's double. That's not mandates, that's just us.
Now, granted a lot of that is built in. It's because of salary increases. And the only way to affect that is to lower the number of people you have working for you. And you have to really choose what services. And I hope we're going to really do that this year. We've been told that this is going to happen this year. We're going to actually know what programs we're going to look at to cut.
I don't know, we've been nibbling around the corners for five years. I bet that's going to happen again. Because I've already sat through some of these and that's already the way -- 'Well, I don't think we have to do it this year,' is what they'll say.
Well, I want to do it this year. I want to make the hard decisions this year. It's going to mean some unpopularity. There are going to be groups that are going to say, 'I don't like that Mike Sigler. He's cutting my program.' There are going to be a lot of people like that. But you know what? That's kind of what you elected me for, to take some of that heat. That's kind of what I'm here for.
LS: It appeared to me from Joseph's statement -- it was a long statement, it had a lot of meat in it -- it looked like he was hedging on Alternatives To Incarceration (ATI) because he said, 'Currently we simply open the jail door and say goodbye. We can do better than that. We must if we don't want to see the same people coming right back.'
I interpreted that as him saying he wanted to keep ATI as-is. That was controversial in the election six months ago.
MS: Well, there's no proof that ATI is working. The same people that advocate for ATI are the same people who said we don't need a new jail. Now it's four years later and we're still debating this jail. It's going to happen, I think, eventually. Because we're budgeting for it. We're looking at our capital program. It's not the first item on the agenda, but it's the second. So I predict that's going to happen within the next four or five years. We're going to start building one.
So it's interesting that that was such a big issue four years ago, 'No new jail.' Well, now, 'We lack program space.' Well, yeah. I could have told you we lack program space. Now we're going to build a certain size jail. Well, let's keep an eye on the future, too. If the population grows how can we expand this so we don't have to build a whole 'nother new jail?
LS: Do you think that the State is asking for too big a jail?
MS: I think it was, but I think there was middle ground. If we had come up with a plan that said we're going to fund this big of a jail -- this may have been done, I don't know. But it seems to me that if you went to somebody with a plan that said, 'Hey, we think your plan is too big, however we're prepared to spend this much on this sized jail, and here's the plan for expansion in case we need it.'
I don't understand why the State would be against that. Because that show we disagree with you, however we understand your point. We're going to plan the space. If we need it then we're not going to have to outlay all this money again to do a whole new jail. Because it's hard to add onto a jail.
I was talking to Sheriff Meskill about this. You don't want a situation like in some counties where they added onto their jails, but now it's like operating two separate jails. Great, we're at the same location, but it's not like operating one jail. And that's costly if you have to do it that way. That's why you want to plan these things far ahead so that if you do expand it's not such an issue.
LS: I want to ask you about the housing shortage in Tompkins County. I'm hearing a lot about affordable housing, which is not low-cost housing.
MS: And I think that distinction has to be made. It's affordable housing. It is not low-cost housing.
LS: I'm hearing that the County wants 3,500 new homes over the next ten years.
MS: That sounds right. It's above 3,000.
LS: As I understand it Lansing is the ripe ground for this to happen. Cayuga Heights is all filled up...
MS: Where else are you going to build?
LS: That brings up the sewer.
MS: You've got to have water and sewer to do it.
LS: The County has asked the Town to change it's zoning to promote growth. Things like the height of buildings in the business zone. I assume that's for apartments or condos and so on. As you know, it's premature to talk about this, but people are talking about it. The Town is talking about asking the County for money to build the sewer.
MS: About $3 million.
LS: Right. The arguments, I think, are creative and interesting. As far as the Town is concerned the Town wants the sewer, but it would still exist without the sewer. But the County's goal of this amount of growth, which is considerably more than the current rate of growth. It makes sense from a certain point of view that the County would want to invest in that. So now the loaded question...
MS: I support the County spending money on this. A lot of my fellow legislators do not.
LS: It seems like some of them are -- what's the word?
MS: Staunchly against.
LS: Yes. And this is before the arguments have been officially made.
MS: Right. That's kind of where I'm at. I'm trying to at least keep the doors open. A lot of them are going to be against it, because they ask, 'Well, why Lansing? Why not Danby? Or Newfield?'
All these arguments are valid. They're worried that it's going to set a precedent. Well the fact of the matter is that I think the building is going to happen in Lansing anyway. The difference is going to be, do you want $400,000 to $500,00 houses with septic systems, or do you want $150,000 to $250,000 houses on a sewer? You can't get those priced houses without sewer. Developers can't make it affordable. They can't justify going and building a $200,000 house if you can't build them with any kind of density. (Currently an acre is required to accommodate septic systems.)
So that's the kind of problem we face. RIght now the Town is looking at, 'We'd like to have a Town center. You can't have that without water and sewer. You're not going to get that without water and sewer. We can't even get a supermarket up by us.
LS: That was another creative idea. The conventional wisdom has been that the growth would all be in the south of the Town by the Village. It would really almost be an extension of the Village. But Andy Sciarabba suggested encouraging growth near the Town Hall area.
MS: If you look over the generation that's kind of happened to some extent. You have the Town Hall in one place, you have the (ball) fields in one place. You look at it and you go, 'Yeah I actually can see a town center happening here. You have the senior citizens home there, you have some businesses up along the back...
This could be it. You could put the main street here, the fields could remain where they are or you could put the fields across the street. There are a lot of options there. Or across the street, that's where you build the center of town. You leave the fields. It's still close enough to the senior citizens home. But now you have some density there. You put the condos or apartments above store fronts like you used to.
You go to Tompkins Better Housing and they know all this stuff. I sat in on one of their rural housing seminars. They know all this. They go, 'Oh yeah, we've been to towns where they make it look like an old town, but it's actually brand new construction. You have a lot of new apartments upstairs. It's all mixed use. It can be done. The problem is the water-sewer.
Now the thing is with the County, it wants this affordable housing. OK. Well, if you want that don't come and say Lansing doesn't want it. It's not that Lansing doesn't want it. Lansing can't get anybody to do it. How are you going to develop here and make it so you can make a profit? You can't without the water-sewer. And it's not like the people that are going to be on water-sewer aren't willing to bear the brunt. It's just really expensive now.
LS: When Sciarabba breaks it down the $3 million doesn't seem like a lot, because it would not be $3 million by the end of the day. He's proposing to ask the donors to commit to a certain amount of money and as density grows it will reduce the donors' share before that of residents, because the donors have already reduced the residents' portion, so they wouldn't actually pay as much as they pledged. It would decrease if what everybody says is going to happen actually happened.
MS: We need the zoning to happen first, because we need to know what the vision is. They said, 'We need a different vision statement. We need to know what you're looking at. What do you want to do here?' It's not enough to say, 'Oh we're thinking about a Town center.' Where's the plan for the Town center.
And how many units are you talking about? You're talking about 30 units per year? We're looking at 300 units per year. That's really what they were hoping.
LS: He did project that the County would make back that money, that within $15 years they'd make four and a half million in new property taxes.
MS: Oh I'm sure of it. I'm sure if we put in the water-sewer, I'm sure we'll make the money back at the County level. That's why I have no problem supporting it. And for other reasons. Everybody says this is the one reason. The other reasons are that the construction is going to happen. You're going to have more septic systems go in. The septic systems that are now in are going to fail and then you're going to have this pollution running down into the lake.
I've lived in a community where that happened. It continues to happen -- they still haven't put in sewer. Instead they treat the lake with chemicals. So we're not unique in that sense. So there's one issue. The other issue is that you want to be able to control the growth in your town. We like the farm land up north. So how do we get the growth to happen just in South Lansing? Or south of Buck Road? There's a way to do that, and it's to put in the water-sewer. Because that's what the development will follow.
LS: What do you see as the prospect for the November election?
MS: I thnk the Sheriff race is going to be tight. I think that three people in it has added a new dynamic to it. There are two guys in there with a lot of police experience. And then you have the current sheriff who's been there for a number of years. It will be interesting. I think that will be the race to watch.
I think that we'll continue to have a Republican congressman in Lansing. I think Sherry (Boehlert) served us a long time. I've met Ray Meier (the Republican candidate). There are a lot of social issues I don't agree with him on, however fiscally I think he's on track. I haven't really heard that much about Mr. Arcuri (the Democratic candidate). We'll find out when he starts running.
I've met Ray and he seems to know what he's talking about. And he's been in every level of government, too. He's been a county legislator, he's been a county executive, he's been in the State Senate. So I think he knows the problems that face upstate New York.
Then we'll see what happens on the Federal level. I would find it hard to believe that Hillary Clinton would be beaten for the Senate seat. However you have KT McFarland and this Spencer running in the primary. We'll see who comes out of that and see if that actually becomes a race.
And we have a good Assembly race. Who would have thought we'd have a good candidate for Assembly against Barbara Lifton? Jim Rohan ran in Trumansburg for County Legislator and did really well. He didn't lose that race by much. If there hadn't been a third party candidate there I think he would have won that. Maybe that's why he lost that race so that he could run against Barbara Lifton, who knows?
LS: I want to finish with economic development. I saw you at the Chamber of Commerce's ribbon cutting for their building addition. The statistics they cited were really impressive for the County.
MS: When it comes to tourism or development.
LS: I guess they were talking more about tourism, but I'm interested in how it affects development.
MS: I think the tourists of today become the residents of tomorrow. People come here and they really like it and decide to stay. Hopefully that happens a lot. I think the number one issue facing New York State right now is still taxes. I mean, it's hard to make a living here as anybody will tell you. It's hard for me to justify staying in this state when they take so much.
My house is not an expensive house in Lansing. I mean, $150,000, $152,000? My taxes are incredible to me. And then I look at people whose houses are four times as expensive. And a lot of that is just because that's how they're assessed. I don't know how they're making it. I mean. granted they make a lot of money, I suppose. But there's got to be a point where they take all of it.
That's why I say when they say we should lean more heavily on the income tax -- they're already doing it. If you had said that, and say the income tax used to be 5% and now you say, We're going to make it 7%, and here's what we're going to do with the property tax,' I would have said OK. But they just raised both! So you're in a pickle now. You've got to cut the number of programs you have in New York.
LS: As an aside, do you think the State is going to give property tax payers a rebate this year?
MS: I think they'll get the rebate, yes. But again, it's $200. That's nice, but when you're paying six grand, it just seems like an election day thing. I want somebody who actually is going to take the problem and say, 'You know what? Now's the time to fix this.' And you're going to anger a lot of people. A lot of people are going to be mad that you're cutting programs, a lot of people working for government. But you've got to be willing to make those kind of enemies, I suppose.
It's interesting that now Elliott Spitzer is talking about property taxes in his commercial. He's talking about the same thing we've been talking about at the County level for four, six, eight, ten, twenty years now. So it's good to see that he's doing that. He'd definitely the front runner. It will be interesting to see if John Faso can pull it out. I know that's on John's radar, so hopefully one of them will do something about it. It's come to the point of 'Stop talking about it.' Stop saying, 'Oh, we understand.' I don't want you to understand, yeah you feel my pain... I don't want you to feel my pain! I want you to actually do something about it.
LS: And that's what you want on the County level?
MS: That's what I want on the County Board. You know, I find a lot of times some people will say, 'I can't believe you compromised on this.' Sometimes you compromise when you know that you're not going to get the whole nut, you're not going to get the whole thing. In my position I'm definitely not going to get the whole thing. If I can get part of it, I'm hoping the residents will be happy, because you're going to be better off than the other way. I'm not going to stand there on a soap box and have nobody listen to me. We're not going to do it that way.
I'd rather be the guy that says, 'We're going to go with the 2.8% tax levy increase, because it means zero percent tax rate increase. And yes, I understand all the ramifications behind that. Then during the budget process I'm going to keep fighting and say, "I don't think we need all these programs. Hers's a program I would cut. Here's another program I would cut. Here are the cuts I would make. Here's how I would shrink the number of employees we have.' And that's the route I would go.
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