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The Lansing Board Of Education unanimously approved a $13,955,294 tax levy for the 2011-2012 school year Monday.  The levy is the amount the district needs to collect from district property taxpayers to raise the money for the $25,275,503 budget voters approved in May.  The increase in the levy from last year is 4.39, which will raise the tax rate an estimated 4.39%.

"That gives us a tax rate of $19.0944," explained School Business Administrator Mary June King.  "Last year we sought to raise the levy $13,368,831.  We actually raised the levy of $13,351,156.  That's just the reality of how this works because property values change, people challenge their taxes, they challenge their values.  It remains throughout the budget cycle and throughout the year."

Voters get to vote on the budget, but the school board votes on what part of the budget must be raised in taxes.  Other income includes state aid, investment income, fees, and monies raised from the PILOT (Payment In Lieu Of Taxes) levy.  A PILOT is an agreement with the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency as to a business's  property value.  That is meant to generate a predictable amount of income for taxing authorities.  The AES Cayuga power plant PILOT has been anything but predictable.  The outcome of a second renegotiation of the agreement this year was bad for local taxing authorities.  This year the plant will make payments of approximately $3.1 million, a decline of approximately $207,000 from the prior agreement.

Superintendent Stephen Grimm noted that the combined levy and PILOT income has been under 2% for the last four years.   But because the value of the AES Cayuga PILOT is less the burden grows on taxpayers.  The money still has to be raised, and homeowners are largely responsible for it.

"The change in the levy is greater than the change in the combined levy because the PILOT is going down as a percentage of that pie," King explained.  "The share that the PILOTs are carrying is decreasing."

King says that lag time in state aid calculations will cause additional stress on the district next year.  State aid for net year is being calculated on a few years ago when income actually increased from the AES PILOT when the value of the plant increased by $20 million.

"That is going to have a negative impact on us," King said.  "I'm working to try to plan for these things so this board can go to the State Legislature to ask what special consideration we can get.  You can't base our state aid on information from three years ago that is completely skewed from what the information is today.  But that's the way the system works."

Normally the school board sets the levy later in the summer, but with the early receipt of information from the Tompkins County tax office it was possible to approve the levy this week.  According to the Assessment Office the total property value within the school district is $730,837,121.

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