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After the Tompkins County Legislature adopted a $156,755,480 2011 budget Tuesday that will increase the tax levy by 5.98% and the countywide average tax rate by 7.9%, Lansing's Legislator Pat Pryor came to the Lansing Town Board meeting Wednesday to report on what county legislators had done.  Town officials, who recently adopted their own budget that reduces both the levy and tax rate, were not pleased, saying that the rise is not sustainable, and that county legislators had bowed to pressure.

"When the County makes all these cuts, they come back to the towns," said Deputy Supervisor Connie Wilcox.  "Then we get chastised because we don't add any more to program funding.  We cut our tax rate this year, and we cut our tax levy.  We had tough decisions.  We had some pretty heated discussions amongst ourselves."

Tompkins County Legislator (Town of Lansing) Pat PryorPryor was one of 11 legislators who voted in favor of adopting the budget.  Legislators Kathy Luz Herrera (Town of Ithaca), Mike Lane (Town of Dryden), Pam Mackesey (Town of Ithaca), and Leslyn McBean-Clairborne (City of Ithaca) voted no.  Pryor said legislators found it hard to withstand the onslaught of people lobbying for programs that benefit them, especially when few people tell the Legislature to cut programs and lower taxes.

Pryor voted no on numerous occasions as the Legislature struggled with whether to reinstate cut programs over the past few months.  The tax levy for 2011 is $40,600,519.  Pryor says she voted to adopt the budget Tuesday because she thought the approximately 0.9% in local spending of the 5.9% levy rise is justifiable.  The rest, she says goes to state mandated programs.  She said legislators heard from few people who are against raising county taxes.

"I hope that people who believe that will step up," she said.  "We need to have people come forward to say they support what we're doing when we're trying to make those cuts.  As we made proposals for the cuts this year we had many people turn out in big numbers to support those programs.  At that point in the process when we had to make these decisions virtually no one was standing up and saying 'Don't raise my taxes.  They're too high.'  It wasn't until we passed the budget that I started hearing from more than one or two people who said 'This is too much.  We can't bear it.  We're going to have to move out of the county.  We're living on a fixed income.  You have to do something about our taxes.'  What I really need is for people to come out early in the process and relay that message."

But Wilcox insisted that it is up to legislators to take responsibility for controlling finances and out of control taxation.

Lansing Town Supervisor Scott Pinney and Deputy Supervisor Connie Wilcox"Our meetings are all public and we didn't have anybody come and say anything about wanting less taxes or more taxes," she said.  "But we feel to be fiscally responsible we need to not increase taxes.  So I'm hoping that's what the County is going to look at whether the public is saying 'don't raise my taxes' or not.  That's a misnomer because nobody wants their taxes raised."

Lansing Community Council President Ed LaVigne encouraged Pryor to encourage the Legislature to lobby the state to reduce the mandates.  He said this is the time to look at needs versus wants, noting that needs are far fewer than the perception of them is.  Pryor said that the process of pushing back against State mandates has been started.

"With all respect to you, I would think this would be your top priority," LaVigne said.  "Unless you get this under control we're going to be in the same situation year after year after year after year after year.  It will not go away."

Pryor herself said that she was not happy with the budget or the process used to come to it. 

"Although we worked very hard to keep this increase down to where it is I do think that we should have done more," she said.  "I'd like to see it come in at even less than it did.  I'm also unhappy with some of the priorities.  I do not think we committed enough money for county infrastructure, including roads.  When we hear how badly it's going to hurt to cut human service programs it's easy to put aside necessary maintenance that we should be doing.  I think that's what we did this year."

She said she will be pushing the Legislature to start the process early in the year to set priorities and to examine every single County program.  She said the County can't continue to do everything that it has been doing.  She noted that the State deficit continues to grow to unmanageable levels, and that state contributions to local governments are not likely to rise or stay at present levels.  She noted that the cap on property taxes being proposed at the State level could hobble Tompkins County, especially if unfunded mandates are allowed to remain.

"If the State were to pass the tax cap right now at the rate that they're talking about we would not even be able to provide mandated services, much less any of our local spending," Pryor said.  "That's the big unknown factor for us for next year."

Town Supervisor Scott Pinney told Pryor that such a high tax rise is not acceptable.  He noted that if things are expected to be worse next year the Legislature will have to do more to control it.

"I realize that the County Legislators all worked hard on this, but certainly a 5.98% tax levy increase and a 7.9% tax rate increase is just not sustainable," Pinney said.  "Things either need to be cut, or things need to be run more efficiently.  There have got to be ways to make things more efficient, and there have got to be other places that we can cut instead of having these horrendous increases year after year."

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