Archive: News

The Lansing Board Of Education received some good news in the wake of approving a budget that will cut supplies and personnel because of disastrous revenue losses caused largely by cuts in New York State aid and a severely downwardly renegotiated assessment of Lansing's biggest property taxpayer.  Growth in the town's overall valuation and savings from an Energy Energy Performance Contract will begin to make up at least some of the anticipated losses, lowering the tax rate a potential 1% from that anticipated when the budget was passed two weeks ago.  But that won't change the actual budget that the board approved two weeks ago.

"The next phase is determining exactly how to do the human resources piece with the layoffs that will occur," said Superintendent Stephen Grimm.  "We'll be searching seniority lists, contacting Civil Service and Labor Relations."

This week the Tompkins County Assessment Department told school authorities that new growth in Lansing that brings the overall assessment up by about $8 million from what was previously projected.

"The levy stays the same, but you will see a reduction in the tax rate," Grimm said.  "It looks like it will be about 1% less.  The tax rate could be under 5, at about 4.98.  We were looking at 5.91 before."

Grimm also noted that the Energy Performance Contract the district entered into a year ago has already yielded significant savings for the district, even though a series of 40 geothermal wells have yet to be drilled.  He said the wells will go in this summer, and savings will increase as the project work is completed.

"We'll see more than a $230,000 drop in our energy bills," Grimm reported.  "That's just this year, and we haven't even put the geothermal system in yet.  That work is already paying for itself, and we'll realize that savings on an annual basis.  It is a green way to go and we're supporting that in many ways."

In addition Business Administrator Mary June King reported she was recently interviewed by Standard & Poor with the result that the district's bond rating has been upgraded from A to A+.  She said the new rating is a result of plans to use reserves to offset revenue losses over the next few years, last year's successful effort to reclassify funds that brought reserve funding to an appropriate level, and the district's responsible budget management that resulted in unspent monies being used to reduce taxes last year.

"That is very, very good as we get ready to go out to bond on the next capital project," she told the board.

Grimm said he would be bringing a consultant to meetings between the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency (IDA) and AES Cayuga, Lansing and the county's largest taxpayer.  A few months ago a PILOT (Payment In Lieu Of Taxes) agreement renegotiation resulted in a half million dollar loss to the Lansing school district in next year's budget.  This was a significant blow, especially because the original agreement would have brought an additional $300,000 to the district next year.  That loss in tandem with state aid cuts and other revenue losses has resulted in cuts to the budget that will mean laying off faculty and staff this summer.

The PILOT negotiation is scheduled to be reopened this May, and Grimm has vowed to be a voice in the negotiation, despite the fact that the official negotiating parties are the power plant and the IDA.

"We're going with a consultant," Grimm said.  "We're gathering information and data.  We're going to be one of the leaders in the room.  We're not an equal partner by any means.  We're basically an observer.  But we're going to understand the formula (they use to value the plant) and we're going to figure out why certain economic indicators and variables in that formula caused it to turn (downward) that much.  If it turned that much when the economy was down, when the economy improves -- I might be an optimist, but Ford is selling cars and the stock market is going up.  Those are two large indicators."

Grimm said he has been talking to County Legislator Pat Pryor and Town Councilwoman Kathy Miller to try to garner support for the school district's interests in challenging the current PILOT assessment of the plant.  While the Town and County both also lose money as a result of the downward assessment, which currently is scheduled to be reduced by $30 million this year, and $10 million each of the following three years, the school district is impacted the most. 

"I want to have as much influence (on the negotiation) as we can possibly have," Grimm said.  "The amount of money that this is going to cost the district if they continue to go down, down, down...  I'm looking for it to go the other way.  When it goes down $30 million that's the equivalent of 200 $200,000 homes.  We'll never get that back.  We want to make sure our interests are heard."

"It happened about five years ago, when this plant was assessed on a different basis than one in Rochester and another one," noted school board member Richard Thaler.  "We appealed that and got it rectified."

Officials noted that a 40 page budget bulletin has been prepared to explain the $24,377,906 budget proposed for the 2010-2011 school year.  Grimm said it is similar to the one his staff prepared last year with detailed breakdowns of how the money is anticipated to be spent. 

"We have been very transparent in this process," King said.  "I think that's the right way to do it.  One of the reasons I wanted to work with this superintendent is his commitment to transparency."

Grimm was cautiously optimistic about  the prospects for coming years.  Despite the looming 'budget cliff' that will most likely find next year's school board making still more cuts, Grimm said that future growth and the desirability of moving to Lansing will help offset revenue problems the state cuts have precipitated.

The prospects for future growth are good.  Of three large developments proposed in the Town of Lansing over the past few years, two appear to be in different stages of moving forward.  The Lansing Commons development has been awaiting final approval from the county for a standalone sewage treatment plant that will allow for the density of building the developer has proposed.  That project proposes to build a combination of more than 30 affordable single family homes, townhouses, and apartments south of the corner of Woodsedge Drive and Cayuga Vista Drive.  Meanwhile a new development entered the initial stages of negotiation with the town Planning Board this week.  It could bring as many as 76 homes and town houses into the mix.

"The sense is that people want to come to Lansing," Grimm told the board.  "Businesses want to come to Lansing and people want to come here.  If that continues over the years it can buffer some of the loss from AES Cayuga."

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