Archive: Opinions

If sewer passes I will have to pay about $65 per year even though I am not likely to have sewer service at my house while I still own it.  That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.  In some ways I am subsidizing my neighbors who will get sewer service, but the way I see it I get something out of it, too.

As I listen to the sewer committee mull over the benefits week after week, the things they consider important are not necessarily the things that are important to me as just a guy who has to pay property taxes in the town.  Or at least their priorities aren't necessarily mine.

Of course we agree on the big one: increase the tax base to make up from the staggering loss of power plant income.  That won't make the school tax actually low enough, but it will keep it lower than it would be without sewer.  If I pay 23 cents per thousand for sewer and save 37 cents on what the school tax would have cost if there were no sewer I am saving 14 cents per thousand dollars of property value.  If you have a $200,000 house that comes to $28 savings.   So I am on board with that argument as the number one reason to have a sewer.

After that I want a town center.  I love having a supermarket within two miles of my house.  Even as out of shape as I am I could walk there if I had to.  I would be out of breath, but I wouldn't be dead.  I save money on gas I would have used to go to the Village of Lansing or into Ithaca to shop.  More importantly I save time.  So I want the density of development that will sustain that little supermarket and justify other businesses like a doctor's and/or dentist's office, a coffee shop, or... dare I wish... a Subway.

The third thing that makes me want sewer is something Town Supervisor Kathy Miller said -- that the State could require a municipality to build a sewer under certain circumstances.  When I think of the millions of dollars state mandates are costing the Lansing schools right now I want to scream.  So the idea of being forced to pay for a sewer raises my hackles to record heights.  (What is a hackle, anyway?  Why is a hackle better when it is not raised?)  Buying it now when it's less expensive is much better than being forced to buy it when prices will certainly be higher.

Everyone wants me to be civically minded and want sewer because it is good for the town and good for the environment.  I think if most of us are honest that isn't in our top three reasons if we do want sewer.  But it is in most people's list of reasons.  I keep hearing about septic systems failures dropping poop into ditches, smelling up the neighborhood, and eventually polluting the lake.  I have a well, so I don't want someone's poop in my ground water.  And even though I'm not a swimmer, I don't want people I know swimming in poop down at the Myers Park beach.

Good for the town?  That is probably the biggest bone of contention among sewer proers and conners.  I happen to buy the argument that it will help us keep the familiar character of the town we all love, because I know that development is going to come here whether we want it or not.  Sewer is a mighty tool for determining where that happens, which means it can help us determine where it doesn't happen so it doesn't happen where we don't want it to happen.  Protecting farmland in a farm community seems to me to be a logical thing to do.

So even though I would prefer that they eliminate property taxes entirely, and only levy progressive taxes from us poor (and getting poorer) New Yorkers, I don't think I would be getting nothing for the about $65 I am slated to be levied, even though I won't be getting sewer at my house.  I think the average homeowner outside the service area will pay closer to $50.

The question is, will getting it be worth $50?  If denser development in a town center makes small businesses sustainable in South Lansing, a lot of mundane shopping could be done closer to home.  We already have a market, and denser mixed-use housing will insure it is sustainable for many years to come.  When it finally gets the ATM they've been promising it's going to save me a whole lot of time and money I now spend driving across Route 13 to make deposits for my business.  So I got to thinking about how time is money, and how much would I save if I didn't have to drive all that way?

How much do you make per hour?  For the sake of easy math let's say you make $10 per hour.

It takes me ten minutes one-way to get to the Village of Lansing to shop for stuff.  So three round trips is one hour travel time.  If I could do those errands two to two and a half miles away instead (that's three minutes one way or 18 minutes for those three round trips).  So about four round trips is about an hour.  You need five hours to save enough time to make $50.  Four round trips times five fours equals 20 shopping trips.

So 20 shopping trips pay for a year of sewer by this math.  That's going shopping for food or other stuff only 20 times in a whole year.  If you make more per hour, fewer shopping trips.  If you do this trip only once a week you have paid for your year of sewer by mid-May simply by doing what you would normally do, but doing it closer.

That's without school tax saving, gas savings, or any of the other tangible or intangible benefits, and without actually having sewer service.  It's just shopping closer because planned density sustains local businesses.  So yeah. It's worth it.

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