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Village of Lansing Mayor Donald Hartill is making a two pronged attack on Town property taxes.  Hartill says that village taxpayers pay the Town of Lansing $700,000 per year, but only receive $100,000 in services from the Town.  Hartill is both lobbying Town officials to reduce the tax burden on villagers, and lobbying for it at the state level for all villages that are part of towns.  He says he is exploring all options up to and including seceding from the township altogether.

"In effect the villagers are subsidizing the township to the tune of about $600,000," Hartill said at a Village Trustee Meeting Monday.  "If you look at the bottom line more than half of the Town's personnel cost is in the whole town budget.  If you then unfold how much of that cost is snow plowing villagers are paying around $130,000 per year for plowing the roads in the Town outside the Village.  That is one obvious concession we can understand and go forward with."

But Town Supervisor Scott Pinney says villagers and townspeople alike would pay less while maintaining the level of services if the municipalities merged.

"We are all punished," he says.  "Not only the non-village residents, but the village residents pay more taxes overall, because there are two separate governments with duplicate agencies."

When Hartill began researching the issue he says he had no realistic expectation that the Town would reduce taxes for villagers, in part because of accepted practices state-wide.  But the tax question ramped up when the Town asked the Village to pay actual snow plowing expenses of about $75,000 in 2009.  In the previous year the Village paid only $30,000 due to an old, extremely advantageous contract it held with the Town.  By July Village officials decided to take matters into their own hands, claiming they could plow their own roads for less than the Town was asking.  That meant an initial outlay for equipment and road salt, and a $477,000 equipment storage garage project is currently under construction, due to be completed by around New Year.

That prompted Hartill to examine the Town budget line by line.  In October Hartill sent a letter to each Town Board member asking for tax relief for villagers.  He had not received a reply by the time of the November 3rd Town budget hearing, so he attended and asked whether the board had a response.

"Nothing in this budget reflects on the letter you wrote," replied Pinney.  "Town Board members Kathy Miller and Robert Cree have volunteered to look into that and try to verify your numbers and inform the board on that.  So we are looking into it."

As of Monday Hartill had not gotten any further communication from the Town on the issue.  Pinney says he has not set a timetable, but Miller and Cree are working on it and he will respond when he has their report.  He noted that the least expensive, though most extreme course of action for the Village may be to completely secede from the Town.  New York law allows for municipalities to split or merge into 'coterminous town-villages' which are essentially a town and a village at the same time.  Voters choose whether the new municipality will operate principally as a village or a town, and elects a new governing body.


Hartill says he envisions the Village of Lansing remaining a village, and notes that the only two services the municipality would have to add are a judicial service and animal control.  He says that both could be subcontracted.  Judicial services could be subcontracted to the Town of Lansing, or to another neighboring town.  Hartill says he doesn't anticipate that would raise taxes in the Village.

Village officials will face significant obstacles if they chose this route.  In June of 2009 Governor David Patterson and Attorney General Cuomo (who is now Governor-elect) passed the New York Government Reorganization and Citizen Empowerment Act.  The purpose of the act is to streamline local governments in order to take advantage of the economy of scale larger governments enjoy, reducing waste, and reducing property taxes for New Yorkers.  Additionally they would have to convince Town residents to vote for the split.

Even if every single voter in the Village agreed, its residents only account for about a third of the Town population.  If every single Village taxpayer voted they would potentially need another sixth of Town voters to agree.  That is unlikely, especially because if Hartill's charges are true it would mean more taxes for town property owners to maintain the current level of services in the town.

With the state-wide tide turned toward merging municipalities, Hartill is initiating a lobbying campaign at the state level through the New York Conference Of Mayors (NYCOM).  He hopes to get other mayors behind his effort to reduce town taxes for villagers.

"It's very common,". he says.  "Every village and town has the same problem, across the state.  One of my activities through NYCOM is to generate a statewide interest in the problem.  In our case it's a very significant load that we get no benefit from."

But Pinney's take is entirely different.  He sides with the Governor, saying that if the two municipalities merged, not only would villagers not have to pay village tax on top of what they pay the Town, but everybody would benefit, in part because of sales tax revenues that are currently split between the two and in part because there would be no need for duplication of services.  Pinney says he has floated the idea of consolidation to Hartill in the past, and thinks that completely removing the Village from the Town would hurt residents of both.

"I think it would have a bad impact not only on the Town, but on the villagers also," he says.  "As public officials our main job is to do what's in the best interest of our constituents, our taxpayers.  By (separating the Village from the Town) I don't think he'd be doing what's in the best interest of the villagers or the townspeople.  He should be looking at ways to consolidate and save everybody money."

There are only five coterminus town-villages in New York State.  In Westchester County Scarsdale, Harrison, and Mount Kisco are coterminous town-villages.    Green Island in Albany County, and East Rochester in Monroe County are the only other two in the state.  The same person in a coterminous town-village serves as both village mayor and town supervisor, and the village board members serve as the town board, unless voters choose to have two boards.  School district boundaries are not affected, and Hartill says Lansing Fire District boundaries wouldn't necessarily be impacted.

The New York State Department of State defines four ways a coterminous town-village may be formed.  A village and town may merge into one government, with either the town engulfing the village or the village merging the town into itself.  A village may split from a town, or a town may split into two towns.  To initiate the process a petition must contain signatures totaling at least five per cent of the total number of votes cast in the town for the office of Governor at the last gubernatorial election, and there must be at least 100 signatures at a minimum.

Hartill says that even when Village taxpayers contracted the Town for snow plowing village roads they also paid for town-wide plowing.  He said that towns have the option of charging villages for town plowing, and that the Towns of Lansing and Ithaca both choose to levy that tax, among many towns state-wide.  With the Village plowing its own roads he charges that villagers are paying the Town three times for plowing: once to the Village, once to the Town, and once to the County because the County contracts with the Town to plow county roads that are within Lansing borders.

"It's called triple dipping," said Trustee Lynn Leopold.

Hartill won't say how far he will go, but he has demonstrably grown more committed to getting tax relief for his constituents.  He says he intends to push the matter on the state level to show that merging municipalities is only one solution to the problem, and that splitting them could be fairer.  Meanwhile he is waiting to hear that Town officials are responding to his letter.

"I'll be happy to provide them with all the numerical data they need," he says.  "I've spent a fair amount of time on it."

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