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Lansing school taxpayers qualify for a rebate check because the school district did the work to stay below the tax cap.  Reportedly New York State began mailing the checks in September, but so far no one in Tompkins County has received one.  Some residents are beginning to wonder where their checks are.  As Cuba Gooding Jr. famously shouted in the film 'Jerry Maguire', "Show me the money!"

"The NYS Tax website has a list of the taxing entities in Tompkins county and it affirms the fact that we stayed under the cap and so are eligible for the rebate," says School Business Administrator Mary June King.  "I called the Tompkins County Assessment Office and I was told that the folks who live in Lansing, Trumansburg, and Newfield, at least, haven't received their rebate yet either."

Tompkins County Director of Assessment Jay Franklin says the checks are coming for property taxpayers throughout Tomkins County except for those in the City Of Ithaca School District, the only school district in the county that failed to comply with the tax cap restriction this year.  State officials say about 4,500 checks woth a total of $1.6 million checks will all be mailed to Tompkins COunty residents before the end of the year.

"There was a hiccup with the vendor that BOCES uses to process school tax bills so the state had to more or less re-run the taxes in order to determine the amount of the rebate," Franklin says.  "This hiccup caused Tompkins County to be pushed further back in the processing order."

Franklin says the 'hiccup' involved Dryden/Trumansburg/Groton records, but for whatever reason, not Lansing or Newfield.  Specifically, the files the State needed to run the tax analysis were different from the files needed to run taxes.

At a joint Lansing Town and School Board meeting in mid-October the Town Board decided that the verification process required of New York State in order to qualify taxpayers for property tax rebates, including detailed documentation proving that shared services save 1% of the budget, is too time and resources-consuming.  They concluded that what amounted to an unfunded mandate would cost more  taxpayers than the value of the checks they would receive.  In addition to the local cost of complying with the tax cap and other conditions, the cost in State tax money for this plus a program that earlier this year yielded $350 checks to over a million residents who have children is reportedly $750 million this fiscal year.  Postage alone for the approximately 4 million checks will cost the state $1.6 million.

"This was a huge undertaking to do what the state said they are doing," Franklin says.  "They are constantly taking data that was designed for one thing and trying to manipulate it to do something else with it.  A lot of behind the scenes database work had to take place to convert, compare and calculate the tax totals."

A Town tax rebate would not kick in until next year, but schools were challenged to stay below the tax cap this year.  Town officials said they would help the schools document services shared with the town. School Superintendent Chris Pettograsso said the school district is complying with state requirements for the rebate checks.  She noted that her staff had complied with the requirements this year and Lansing school taxpayers would receive a check.

"We conduct an exit survey at budget vote time, and a number of our voters said the reason they said yes to the budget was because of the freeze and the rebate checks," she said at that meeting.  "We understand these are hard times, so we're going to continue to push forward with shared services."

As President of the NYS Real Property Tax Directors Franklin has been privy to weekly phone meetings with state officials this year.  He says if the check isn't in the mail it is expected to be some time this month.

"I have been told that the state intends to have all the checks mailed out this fall - and fall means all the way to December 20th," he said Thursday.  "I have another phone call with the state today and will press them to see if they can give a date on it but based upon past conversations, these will be delivered some point in the next two weeks or so."

That call didn't yield much in the way of committment from the State.

"The state was unable to give me an exact date for our checks to go out but they did say that 80,000 checks were delivered Tuesday to the Comptrollers office for audit prior to being mailed out," Franklin said.  "They couldn't tell me if we were in that batch or not.  But the 'by the end of fall' was slightly extended to 'by the end of the year'.

Bottom line?  Don't count on your check for Christmas shopping, but it may come in time to buy a bottle of New year bubbly.

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