Archive: News

At its meeting on April 16, 2012, the Board of Trustees unanimously passed the 2012-2013 Village of Lansing Budget as proposed.  Features of the budget include $2,446,197 in appropriations for the General Fund with the aggregate salaries for the Board of Trustees at $20,000 ($5000.00 each) and the Mayor’s salary at $12,500.  The tax rate has been reduced from $1.21 to $.99 per $1000 assessed value for the 2012-2013 Budget.

Funds are also included for the new Village Office Building with an estimated total cost including contingency of $720,000.  The new office building is being paid for by a combination of carry-over funds from last year’s budget and funds from the Capital Reserve Fund. With the construction of the new office building, the major construction projects for the Village will be completed and expenditures will return to a steady state.  In this state, it is now possible to reduce the property tax rate from last year’s $1.21 per $1000 assessed value to $0.99 per $1000 for this year.  We expect this to be the rate adjusted for inflation for the coming years. 

In addition to the General Fund appropriations, the appropriations for the Water Fund are $783,012 and $672,223 for the Sewer Fund.  These two funds are funded by user fees and do not involve property taxes.  The Village has no debt that is not covered by capital reserve funds (there is a small debt for sewers that were constructed many years ago that has a high early payment penalty clause – it is much cheaper to continue paying the debt).

From the NYS tax rate tables for 2010-2011 for the 3655 taxing entities in New York State, the Village of Lansing has among the lowest tax rates if not the lowest tax rate of any Village in New York State.  For the total tax rate on properties within the Village of Lansing we rank 2267th out of the 3655 for the properties in the City of Ithaca School District and 1974th out of 3655 for the properties that are in the Lansing School District (ranking numbers are: 1st is highest tax rate and 3655th is the lowest tax rate).

The total tax rates were respectively $25.05 and $26.65 per $1000 of assessed value for the two areas for this period.  In comparison for properties in the Town of Lansing outside the Village, the total tax rate is $27.69 due to special assessment districts (water and sewer, etc).  Good fiscal management and out-sourcing as much of our needs as possible makes this a reality.

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