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If you like to complain about the high property taxes in Tompkins County,  you have a point.  According to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group based in Washington, D.C., Tompkins county is the 36th highest taxed county (ranked by property taxes as a percentage of home value) in the United States.  In fact 30 of those 36 are in New York, with two in Illinois, and one in Texas.  The foundation released the results based on taxes over a three year period between 2006 and 2008.

Not surprisingly, the highest median real estate taxes were paid in Westchester County, New York, where the median home value was $581,900.  But for property taxes as a percentage of home value Westchester ranked 316th with taxes equalling 1.44% of property value -- surprisingly much lower than Tompkins County.

Last year a total of $40,305,193.53 was collected from Tompkins County property owners, up from $39,552,539.37 in the previous year.  In Lansing school tax rates equalled $17.60 per $1000 of assessed property value, actually down from 2008.  But the tax rate is estimated to go up to $18.48 when this summer's tax bill comes.  In Dryden and Trumansburg taxpayers paid about $20 per $1000 for school, while in Candor the rate was about $15.5.

Municipalities cry 'unfunded mandates' when challenged to lower taxes, and in New York, at least, that is increasingly true.  But it is nearly impossible to untangle the mandates and the costs municipalities are required to shoulder versus the amounts they choose to spend.  And the actual impact is difficult to untangle.  For example, the state foisted dog licensing onto towns this year.  However, the state also abolished dog license revenue sharing between the town, county, and state, directing 100% of the revenue to the towns and cities that collect the fees.  That may recompense the towns, but it is a drop in revenue for counties.  And does the loss in the economy of scale actually compensate the towns for the extra work?

Local schools are between a rock and a hard place.  The rock is the miserable economy that has made it harder for aleready overstressed taxpayers to deal with higher local taxes.  The hard place is cuts in state aid for schools, estimated at 10% in the coming year.  For Lansing the 'hard place' is even harder with reduced revenue from the county's biggest taxpayer, AES Cayuga.  The district, which School Superintendent Stephen Grimm claims has been very responsible about budgeting and monitoring spending in the past couple of years, found itself laying off employees this year with the prospect of more layoffs and higher taxes still next year.

Municipalities are mandated by New York State to do a plethora of things that the State does not pay for.  But at a town meeting held in June by the Town of Lansing's representative to the County Legislature, Pat Pryor, Tompkins County Administrator Joe Mareane said that the way those mandates are carried out are often discretionary.  He said that the level of services taxpayers want are often higher than the mandates require.

Mareane said he was recommending a 5% rise in the county budget this year, and since then has warned that new hits to county revenues will make this year's budget cycle especially difficult.  This week he reported to legislators that departments and agencies have included nearly $4.5 million in over-target requests as part of their budget submissions which he is currently reviewing.  These requests seek to restore items they were forced to cut to meet the directed 6.9% target reduction for the 2011 budget.

In Tompkins County property taxes came to 2.21% of home value, the 36th highest in the nation.  The County's median real estate taxes were $3,497 with the median home value at $158,500.  Tompkins ranks 94th out of 1822 U.S. counties in the median dollars paid.  As a percentage of income, Tompkins County ranked 76th, with a median income of $72,505.

Town of Lansing officials have prided themselves on keeping taxes down and doing more with less.  Critics say that town taxes are too high.  Lansing Town Supervisor Scott Pinney has overseen department cuts over the past couple of years, and is gearing up for the next budget cycle.  The Star asked Mareane, Grimm, and Pinney via email whether it is more expensive to run their municipalities here than in other areas of the country.  By deadline time for this issue, only Pinney has replied.  He says that it may be more expensive to run a town in this area than in some parts of the country, but it is also less expensive than other locations.

"We're trying to do the very best that we can," says Pinney.  "There is certainly room for improvement."

Property taxes have increased in Tompkins County every year in the last decade in Caroline, Danby, Dryden, Enfield, Groton, the Town and City of Ithaca, Lansing, Newfield, and Ulysses.  Last year in Lansing there was a 7.35% rise in the assessed total of parcels in Lansing, which theoretically reduces taxes because it means more taxpayers.  Countywide there was a 3.34% rise in the total.  But taxes go up and up.

The average for the United States is 0.96% of home value, quite a lot less than Tompkins County's 2.21%.  Five counties match that national average: Franklin County, Pennsylvania; Effingham County, Georgia; Alachua County, Florida; Franklin County, Maine; Marion County, Oregon; and Darke County, Ohio, rank 711 through 716.

Local communities manage to do the things they really want, whether the government does them, or private citizens.  Lansing's recent playground project is one example.  At least one segment of the community felt a new playground was important enough to raise over $130,000 in donations, and within less than half a year the money was raised and the playground built.  That is an amount the town government never would have spent on a nonessential service.

Critics say that government is too big and does too much.  At recent public meetings in Lansing they have pointed to the success of projects like MP3 and said that government should do a lot less and let private individuals take care of the things the community cares enough about to fund.  Pinney's 'perfect world' solution to high taxes is succinct:

"Country, county, whatever it is, I think it's easy," he says.  "Smaller government."

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