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For at least six years Village of Lansing Mayor Donald Hartill has complained that villagers are paying an unfair amount of property taxes to the Town of Lansing.  Hartill has repeatedly threatened to separate the Village from the Town by forming a coterminous town/village -- an independent township that is also a village.  At first it seemed he was using the threat of taking about a third of the Town tax base as a negotiating ploy, but as his frustration has mounted with what he characterizes as 'being ignored by the Town,' he has said that he is quite serious about creating a coterminous municipality separate from the Town.

But what does the Mayor really want?  Is coterminous really his endgame?  Hartill met with the Lansing Star at his office in the Village Hall a couple of weeks ago for a frank conversation about the issues that have led him to this juncture.  Our interview is transcribed in full below.

	What Does The Supervisor Say? Ed LaVigne has been supervisor for less than three months.  He has talked about strengthening the Town's relationship with the Village frequently, both in his campaign and since he took office.  He regularly attends Village trustee meetings.  At Monday's meeting Mayor Hartill suggested meeting with LaVigne, but in any real sense LaVigne has not been approached with the property tax issue yet.  That is not to say he is unfamiliar with the issue.  But when I asked him what he thought about it he said he wanted to talk to the Mayor first and see what they can agree on. "It's premature to discuss this," he says.  "The fact that I am going to their meetings is a positive sign that we want to strengthen our relationship with the Village.  I look forward to building a positive relationship with the Village.  I wouldn't comment on that any more than simply seeing where all this goes.  We'll see what our positives are and we'll embrace them.  If there are any negatives we'll try to minimize them.  We will see where that leads us."

First a brief history (click here to scroll down to the interview if you want to skip this section): in 2010 the Village decided to plow its own roads after a contentious flap over the cost of snow plowing.  Prior to that the Village had been paying the Town according to a formula that was much less than it was costing the Town.  Tempers flared on both sides.  In Hartill's case it led to a lne by line review of the Town budget that he claimed showed that villagers were subsidizing non-village residents by $130,000.  As he looked for ways to reduce taxes on villagers he begn to think about splitting from the Town entirely.  He says that Supervisors Scott Pinney and Kathy Miller ignored his request for a change in which the highway budget, in particular, is funded.

Pinney refused to change the taxing structure, but he didn't exactly ignore Hartill's request.  When Hartill first threatened a split Pinney came back with a counter-offer.  He said village taxpayers would save even more tax money if the Village merged back into the town.  He offered to step down as Supervisor in favor of Hartill taking the position if he would agree to merge.  Hartill declined the offer.

There are four ways the State allows coterminous municipalities to be formed.  The first two do not apply to the Village of Lansing.  Option 3 requires the State Legislature to create the town/village in law.  Option 4 keeps the process local, but requires a vote by the entire town, including villagers, the majority of which must vote yes to the split.

I was under the misconception that Hartill plans to pursue option 3.  While it requires state legislation, it does not require a town-wide vote, though the provision in the law allows the State Legislature to require a vote if they so choose.  My assumption was based on my belief that townspeople who live outside of the village would never approve the split, if only because their own property taxes would see a hefty rise were it to occur.  As I have talked to town officials over the years they are skeptical for the same reason.  But Hartill says if it comes to that the vote will swing toward the Village.

Is that what the Mayor really wants?  As it turns out, no.  He sees it as a means to an end, and only one means among a few he is pursuing.  He certainly wants a review of how whole-town and part-town (the term used to describe the portion of the town outside of the Village) is taxed.  He still says he will pursue the coterminous option if he can't come to an agreement with the current Supervisor Ed LaVigne.  But his wider agenda is to get the New York Conference Of Mayors (NYCOM) to put the issue of only taxing villagers for services rendered on its legislative agenda.  NYCOM lobbies Albany for laws that are in the interests of cities and villages.  Hartill says this would force townships accross the state, including the Town of Lansing, to levy taxes on villagers more fairly.

Lansing Star: You've said this at different times in different ways over the past six years.  The last thing that you said to me was "Town won't even consider moving the snow plowing budget to the part-town part of the budget.  Is that the only thing?  At one time you went through the Town budget line by line.


Village of Lansing Mayor Donald Hartill: It's more than that, but that's a start.  If that were to happen I'd be less concerned.  I've tried several years in a row unsuccessfully to make that transition.

If you look at surrounding towns, the Town of Ithaca, for example, the snow plowing is financed by property taxes in the part town -- the town outside of the city and Cayuga Heights.  Groton is also the same way.  What the Town of Lansing has done is to take all of the sales tax revenue and apply that to the part-town budget.  So, both in the highway budget and in the general fund you end up with all of the property taxes are collected in the whole town part.  There is no collection in the part-town art.  That's in contrast to at least two other towns I know of, and I am pretty sure in contrast to a fair fraction of the towns.

I was under the impression that the Town was using the sales tax for the part-town side, for the part that doesn't plow the Village.

And road maintenance and everything else.  Specifically, the whole-town part of the highway fund includes the snow plowing, which they're allowed to do by New York State law.  The one thing that they're not allowed to do is bridge repairs and normal road repairs within the Town.  That has to be paid for by the part-town taxes.

That is one component, and if you look in the Town budget it's a little over 300 grand.  Villagers pay almost 40% of the Town taxes, so villagers are paying, in this case, 120 grand for plowing snow in a part of the Town that, quite frankly, they do not use.  Whereas villagers pay for the snow plowing here, that most of the Town uses, because they come through the village.  There's an imbalance there.

If you look at all of the services villagers could enjoy from the Town, all of them, it amounts to probably one hundred, one hundred fifty thousand, somewhere in there using rather generous counting.  On the other hand villagers pay more than $700,000 in property taxes to the Town, exclusive of fire protection. 

Which is a different taxing authority.

Right.  That's where I'm coming from primarily.

	There are 932 townships, 545 villages, and 62 cities in New York State.  Their lobbying bodies are the New York Association of Towns and the New York Conference of Mayors (NYCOM).  Hartill wants NYCOM to lobby Albany to change the law so that Towns can not tax villages within their borders for services they do not provide.

I've talked to a number of people.  We will certainly talk about that at the regional NYCOM (New York Conference Of Mayors) meeting in Cortland (which took lace last week).  I tried to get them to talk about it at the (state-wide) NYCOM legislative meeting, which happens in early January.  I will also be attending the main meeting in May, in Saratoga Springs.

I am insisting that there be an agenda item where we have a heart to heart discussion about this division.  The appropriate charges to villagers in terms of town taxes.

It's basically NYCOM getting together and deciding what their lobbying is going to be.  It's a general meeting.  Attendance is usually about 300 attendees from among the six hundred cities and villages in the state.  It's a pretty good fraction.

I and a number of other people -- I have a few friends downstate who are in the same boat that we're in -- want to try to get this on the agenda.

Is that 'boat' unusual?  You've named a couple of communities in Tompkins County that are not in this situation.

Right.  I think typically where it happens is when the village is formed and there are bad feelings, which there certainly were in this case.  Sometimes they get over it and sometimes they don't.  That's sort of where we are.

Despite what people say in public there is definitely some friction here.  There's an attitude thing -- I'd say a cultural difference.

Right.  It's trying to put a square peg in a round hole at some level.

This whole business basically came to a head when we used to get a very reasonable discount on snow plowing.

  As I recall it was a steal.

  It was about 75% of what we are currently paying.  A 25% discount - looked at that way.  The proposal, when we started doing our own roads, in round numbers was about 75 grand to do the snow plowing.

One of the other problems is the salt, for budgetary reasons.  Our storm water drainage systems -- if we use sand then we have a big cleaning job every summer.  So we've stuck strictly to salt.  It was a little bit more expensive.  So that was another issue with the Town, besides the cost.

If you had paid the Town more would they have used strictly salt?  I can't imagine that they wouldn't.

If we had paid them more, yes, I think that's right.  But I think the the $75,000 was the price using the mix.  I'm pretty sure it was so long ago that I don't remember the exact details.

	If the Village were to leave the Town, Hartill estimates town tax rate would go up by more than 50 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value.

I think the biggest thing is, to put it bluntly and speaking for villages and towns, not just our particular situation, of using the tax base of a village as a cash cow to provide services that are extensive, basically subsidizing the part-town in a fairly heavy way.

I'm very sensitive to the situation that is certainly going to transpire with respect to the power plant, so I expect even more difficulty in trying to come to some reasonable arrangement.

Right now the town tax rate is $1.49.  If we were to go down this path where the villagers were not subsidizing the rest of the Town, that tax rate would probably go over $2.00.  So I'm sure there would be great concern about that.

Also because the taxes in the Lansing School District are quite high.

So are the school taxes in the City of Ithaca.

That's true.

My tax load on the properties that we own is (high).  We never had children in the school systems.  I am happy to pay that.  I have no problem with that.  But when I have to pay for additional things that I don't get any benefit from, then I have a problem with that.  That's sort of where we are.

Coming back I will be meeting with people (at NYCOM) in May to see if there is some path forward where this issue is recognized on a state-wide level.

I have heard over the years from different people that this situation is not unique.  That it's the way it is around the state.  It's just the way it is and villages live with it and need to live with it. 

It's always been basically a standoff relationship, because of the history.  I got into the whole business when the town was pushing very hard to develop all of Triphammer Road as a strip mall.  Pyramid Mall was the first player, and Cayuga Mall.  Triphammer (Marketplace) was here when we got here.  The other two weren't.

It was clear what the path was, and it was treated as 'this is the way we're going to solve our budget problems, by just developing everything.'

How long ago was this -- it must have been a really long time ago.

'70s.  We came here in '68.


You're talking about the lead-up to the formation of the Village of Lansing.

The Village was formed in '74.

That's part of the history of this whole business.

On the other hand... you know I grew up in eastern Washington.  Townships are just something on a map there.  You either have cities or villages and the county.  That's it -- there's no township.

The other path in this whole business is a coterminous designation.  There are five of those in New York State.  The closest one to us is East Rochester.  I've talked to people there about how it came about.  It wasn't quite like what we have going on here.  it was more that half the village was in one township and the other half was in another township.  There was never agreement on what path to go down, so they said 'OK we give up, and we'll go coterminous.'

The mechanism for that is to get the majority of the county legislature to agree to a referendum.  That referendum is then voted on by all residents of the township, and you have to end up with a majority saying that you can form a coterminous.

You're talking about method 4.  The fourth method requires a vote of everyone in the township (including the village).  Using the third method the state can require it if they want to.

The third method is basically the State controlling the situation.  The fourth method is local control via the County Legislature.

But it assumes that the two aggrieved parties, so to speak, are amicable to the split.

No, it doesn't assume that at all.

Well, if there's a vote of all the townspeople, and the villagers have a third of the voting citizens, then you would have to have at least a fraction of the townspeople (outside of the Village) who are willing to pay more taxes.

Or who weren't paying any attention.  From my point of view that's a very last resort.

So you're looking at method 4?

I'm really looking to try to get the State Legislature to realize that they have a problem, and there ought to be a mechanism by which that problem gets relieved either by forcing towns to be more realistic, which they certainly have the power to do.  That's the path that I'm trying.  That has a wider appeal that the local situation.

If that were to come to be you wouldn't need this (to split from the Town).

  That's right.  or at least going part way.  I realize the Town has some problems.  So does the Village.  But it needs to have a little more sensitivity to issues with respect to the Village.  That's really what I'm driving at.


You tried to negotiate this with three Supervisors now.  Well, two so far.

Two -- Ed and I haven't had a chat yet.

Unsuccessful.  Basically they listened to me and absolutely nothing happened.

Not even a no.

Not even a no.  The fact was that it didn't make any difference, which is even worse than no.

There's another option.  I know that (former Supervisor) Scott Pinney brought up this option.  That was to merge the Village back into the Town.  I've heard people say -- not villagers -- that the differences that caused the split between the Village and the Town back in the '70s are largely nonexistent any more.  The Town has zoning now, it's building out sewer a little bit at least on the Warren Road side...

Courtesy of the Village, by the way...

Courtesy of the Village, yes, the Village being a pass-through to the sewage treatment plant.  ...That the savings would be equal or more to village taxpayers than they would be under a coterminous town/village.

Actually it's the other way around.  If we have a coterminous agreement I would have to provide all of the things that we get from the Town.  It's really quite restrictive.  The court, dog control and that's it.

That's all? 

Basically.

Because you're already doing your road work.  That's usually the big thing, but courts are a big thing and getting bigger.

No, actually it's not.  You have to look carefully at the Town budget. I could contract with Cayuga Heights for probably about $50,000 to do the courts.  That is not a big chunk.

And it's not a big bite in the tax rate.

That's right.

Scott actually offered for me to take over the Town.

I heard that, and I heard you turned him down.

I thought about it.  And then thought about what I would have to do to get this same level of efficiency that I have in doing the surfaces in the Village.  There's a very large staff in the Town.  That large staff is a very expensive enterprise.

It's about 40 people...

Yes, compared to five and a half here, because we have two quarter timers.

So that was the conundrum.  I didn't see any way clear without Draconian measures to actually accomplish that.  And I was not prepared to continue the status quo.  So I ended up saying no.

I never quite understood why the Town had the kind of... I looked at the Town of Ithaca budget and it's about the same, for the same reasons.  They've been around a lot longer.  There are all these things.

It seems live everyone (all the town employees) is busy when you see them working in the Town.

I have a meeting with Cricket to see if we can get more out of the Town -- help with ditching and things like that.  That would take some load off of our staff.  So we'll see.

But that would be a partial solution in your mind?

Yes, partial.  At one point with Kathy I said if we could move half of the current whole-town budget paid for by villagers to the part-town, fine.  That's fair enough.  But that was a wild dream.

But I want to have a chat with Cricket and I want to have a chat with Ed.  But I'm still going to go ahead with the other side of things.

Ed has been talking about finding areas of agreement.

We'll see if we can work something out.  I'm certainly not going to say no, you can't do that.  It's just been frustrating over the years, to say the least.

I think I once mentioned the idea of merging back into the town in the Village boardroom, and everyone said, with some ferver, 'no, no, it will never happen'.  I was amused, but in this unattached sense that there does seem to be a culture difference between the two municipalities.

There really is.  If you look at the Town, it's primarily agricultural.  I grew up on a hardscrabble dairy farm, so I come from that background.  The reason I can fix anything is because I had to fix everything.  So I understand that.

The Village has a fairly large commercial section.  More than half of our residents are rental property residents.  It's just very different, and we have a transient culture.  There are 300 houses, or something like that.  It's not very many.

The other thing is there is fairly large development pressure.  You see it happening in the Town sort of helter-skelter.  There is no real plan for infrastructure needs and things like that.  It's just being built, whereas in the Village we're managing that pretty carefully.  So that's another real difference.

Even though the Town now has a Planning Board, a part time planner, and a part time engineer, you still look at what's happening from 30,000 feet -- there's been no change.

So if the worst case scenario happens, which then prompts an attempt to become a coterminous town/village, you're confident that there will be enough people who live outside of the village who would vote for it?

It would probably depend more on lack of participation outside of the Village.

But voting participation is low in the Village.

Not on something like that.

The write-in campaign last year is an example of what happens when people get concerned.  (Editor's note: Trustee Pat O'Rourke was out of the country during the period in which candidates could declare their candidacy and get signatures, so the Community Party put forth two other candidates for the two open seats.  When O'Rourke got back she mounted a write-in campaign and won her seat back in the election.)  That's just a fact.

What would be your best case scenario?

My best case scenario would be that we come to an agreement that the snow plowing moves to the part-town part of the budget, which would necessitate having a different tax levy in the part-town, versus the whole-town.  People were terribly upset by that.

The Town of Ithaca has a different tax levy for the part-town versus the whole-town, and higher, of course.

You're saying people in the Village were upset about the Town and Village having the same tax levy?

Yes, and the refusal on Kathy's part to even consider having a different levy.  Groton, for example, has a different tax levy outside the Village than it does for the whole-town.  I've only looked at three that I know quite a bit about.  That's one of the questions that we'll be exploring at NYCOM.

I want to go back to NYCOM.  Your best case scenario there is that lobbying to prevent towns from taxing villages for services not rendered gets on the legislative agenda.

It won't happen immediately.  It's like everything else.  You're going to have to 'wear a groove'.  I would much prefer to have a sensible approach rather than going into all of this (coterminous ) stuff.  From my conversations with other village mayors, it's a universal concern.

Have you talked to someone at the State Comptroller's office?

  Not really.  They would be the ones that enforce things, but they don't create policy, so it has to come from the Legislature.  It's certainly not going to happen in my career lifetime.

On the other hand, if you don't pay attention to things like that you get the kind of presidential circus that we're witnessing.

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