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With a 2% property tax cap coming closer, local taxing authorities are struggling to figure out what they will do.  The state imposes unfunded mandates and now proposes to cap tax revenue that is needed to pay for them and local programs.  Interestingly the state doesn't collect property taxes and isn't proposing an income tax cap.  One loophole is proposed: if a 60% supermajority wants to pay more than 2% it may be allowed.

"If the Lansing taxpayers feel it is necessary they could go beyond the 2% tax cap," says Lansing School Superintendent Stephen Grimm.  "By showing that we've had near 70% (budget approval) in the last two votes it's a real possibility that could be a consideration."

That is not to say that Grimm is advocating a higher tax levy.  But it is one of the few options for school districts that are facing reduced aid and other revenue.  The only other option is more program cuts.  Lansing schools are taking a slow approach, applying money not spent in one year to help fund the next one as well as dipping deeply into reserves.  But as reserves are depleted more severe cuts will be the only option left to the district.

The New York State Senate passed a 2% property tax levy cap bill on January 21, and on May 24th Governor Andrew Cuomo announced an agreement with the State Assembly to pass a bill that would bring the tax cap into law.  The actual standing of that is still in question, but local municipalities are concerned that their ability to collect taxes they need for local programs and state mandates will be curtailed.  In Lansing the taxing authorities most likely to be impacted are the school district and Tompkins County.  Both have been struggling to make ends meet, cutting employees and programs.  And the only budgets that taxpayers vote on directly are the school's and the library's.

Town and Village of Lansing officials, as well as Lansing Fire Commissioners say they don't anticipate the tax cap impacting their anticipated plans.  The fire district has outlined a 20 year plan with minimal tax rises every four or five years.  The library's levy is fixed unless taxpayers vote to raise (or lower) it.  In the past three years the Town of Lansing has stayed well below a 2% rise in the levy with a 0.16% rise in 2009, a 0.002% drop in 2010 and a 1.7% drop in 2011.

That is not to say that taxes don't go up.  The tax rate and property valuation determine what the final dollar amount will be.  But in terms of how much a state property tax cap will impact what can be collected, these taxing authorities appear to be OK.

The school district is in a different boat.  While school tax collection has become much more conservative in the past few years -- dropping from a 7.7% rise in the levy in the 2007-2008 school budget year to 5.4% in '08-'09 to 2.4% in '09-'10, up to a 2.9% rise in '10-'11 and now dropping to a 1.9% rise for the 2011-2012 school year -- budget gaps of over two million dollars resulting in staff, program, and supplies cuts have plagued the district for the past couple of years.  And that is not going to get better.

"We still hope for the best, but planning for the worst included the 2% tax cap," says Grimm. "With that we had about a 2.8 million dollar deficit.  If we used about 1.8 million dollars in appropriated fund balance and reserves we would still have approximately 1.1 million dollars left over to be made up for with either cuts or with taxes.  With a 2% tax cap that left about $800,000 in cuts."

That leaves the Board Of Education with a balancing act between maintaining quality education in a district that leads the county in academic achievement and not taximg more than already over-burdened property owners can bear.

"You have to look at the fact that the majority of people in the community have kids in the school system, so they know what they want," says School Board president Anne Drake.  "We have to look at the fact that there are a lot of people that don't have kids in the district.  They live on a fixed income, and we have to look at that, too."

Grimm's approach to that is to ask the community what it wants before a budget vote, and hope the vote aligns with what the community has to say.

"Part of that is creating a community advisory group that will work throughout the fall to clearly identify what it is the Lansing community wants in their schools, and affirm whether that really is what they want," he says.  "And at the same time we need to try to figure out whether we can get in under that 2%.  We've always tried to do that.  In the last four years our average has been under 2%.  We're going to try for that again.  We're hoping for more state aid, but as we move forward if we find out that having a 2.5% tax levy increase... .5 on our tax levy, somewhere around eighty or ninety thousand dollars could be a teacher in a core area or class sizes of 30 in the high school, we may want to go for 2.5.% and ask the community for a supermajority to be able to do that."

He also says that he is researching ways to give a break to people on fixed incomes.

"We are very empathetic toward the older folks in this community," Grimm says.  "They're the backbone of this community culturally.  They're the ones who have defined what Lansing is.  We're looking at any kind of legal ways (to help them) through tax abatements standards for certain incomes and ages.  We're going to try to explore that at the same time."

For the past two years some school board members have advocated drastic cuts now on the grounds that salaries and benefits are the ongoing piece of the budget that escalates.  They argue that reducing the base expenditure now will save taxpayers money over the coming years because there will be less to escalate.  Others, including Grimm and Drake, argue for taking a slower approach, cutting only what you have to when you have to, and using the time to determine what the community wants and how much burden it will bear.

"Somebody told me, 'In a dark room take little steps.'  And that's what we're going to do," Grimm says.  "You have to remember that in a year or a day in the life of a child in school they can lose a lot.  So we've got to make sure that anything we do to this program, it's going to minimise impact on the students.

"Only if you need to cut it... absolutely if you need to cut it is when you cut it.  Before then, as far as I'm concerned it is life and death.  It's the life and death of learning for our children."

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