News Briefs:
TC Levy Hike Cut to 3.3%
(Oct. 9): Using revised sales tax estimates and a draw on accumulated savings, a committee of the Tompkins County Legislature comprised of all legislators Wednesday night slashed next year’s projected tax levy increase to 3.31 percent, a far cry from the double-digit increases first proposed.
“I just don’t think in this time and this economy we can ask our taxpayers to pay more in their property tax when we have an opportunity to adjust revenue to a reasonable number that even if we’re off by 500 thousand we could still absorb,” legislator Greg Mezey, one of those leading the drive for a lower levy, said Wednesday.
Final tax cutting decisions came at the end of an exhaustive more than four-hour budget meeting October 8. The Expanded Budget Committee’s final recommendation goes to the full Legislature and then to public hearing. Expect few further changes.
Newfield-Enfield legislator Randy Brown led the effort to draw on heightened sales tax receipts to soften the property tax hit. Lansing’s Deborah Dawson, in turn, proposed using accumulated fund balance savings to draw $1.75 Million into the budget to replace what would otherwise need tax money.
What emerged Wednesday night stands as a far cry from the double-digit tax increases the County Administrator had feared at mid-summer, the 4.5 percent increase he’d advanced last month, or the 7.77 percent increase running totals had calculated before Brown and Dawson had suggested their changes within an hour of adjournment.
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Enfield ’26 Budget Advances
(Oct. 8): Aside from the formalities, the Enfield Town Board pretty much put its next year’s budget to bed Wednesday.
By a unanimous vote—at least one member said he voted reluctantly—the Board advanced a modified version of Supervisor Stephanie Redmond’s Tentative Budget to Preliminary status and set October 22 for a Public Hearing after which the Board could make the budget final.
The $2.6 Million spending plan for 2026 would increase overall spending by about 6.5 percent and raise the property tax levy by about the same percentage.
Having accomplished most of the heavy lifting at a meeting three weeks earlier, the Town Board refused October 8 to make any further changes. It defeated, four-votes-to-one, Councilperson Robert Lynch’s (this writer’s) appeal to grant the Town Justice and her clerk a further $530 annual raise.
The Board also rebuffed Highway Superintendent Barry Rollins’ request to replenish a $75,000 equipment reserve fund that Rollins insists he needs for future purchases. Redmond said to fund the reserve would have pushed the tax levy increase past 10 percent.
Next year, even more than for 2025, the Enfield budget would rely on accumulated savings—fund balances— to contain taxes. Still, Board members were cautioned the cushion in their General Fund is falling near to the amount past Boards have said should be kept in the bank.
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They Came. They Pleaded
(Oct. 1): Forty-four people, an abnormally large number, took their varied appeals before the Tompkins County Legislature September 30 as it held a “Public Forum,” essentially an early-stage public hearing, into the county’s proposed $240 Million next year’s budget.
Limited to three minutes each, attendees—most who came in person—lobbied for restoring administrative cuts to human service programs and other vital services. Some supported the TCAT transit system; others the County Library.
Yet most often, and most passionately, speakers lauded OAR, (Opportunities, Alternatives, and Resources), a support group for the once-incarcerated.
“I’ve been incarcerated, I’ve been homeless, and I’ve been a drug addict,” an emotional Ashley Cramer, holding her baby to her chest, told lawmakers. “And the only person that has not forgotten my name or brushed me off as a nobody is OAR.”
A frequent target was the Ithaca-Tompkins Airport, for which Administration has proposed a hefty subsidy. But the money, critics argued, should be put to other programs.
“You’re trying to fund an airport. You’re joking, right?” Kirk Rosenfeld, another ex-inmate OAR supporter, asked. “We’re talking about people’s lives… not flying planes. We can’t afford a plane ticket. We’re trying to get food.”
The County Legislature will continue massaging the budget through October.
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Ithaca BOE Blesses Foreign Trips
(Oct.1): With very little discussion, and by quick, unanimous votes, the Ithaca Board of Education September 30 approved a pair of school-sanctioned foreign trips; one to Morocco, the other to Vietnam.
Ithaca students have traveled overseas before. But in June, School Board members questioned whether ICSD should suspend the trips in view of international tensions, the Trump Administration’s travel bans, and immigration enforcement.
“Legal counsel has some concerns about ICSD sanctioning travel,” Board President Sean Eversley Bradwell had cautioned back then.
None of those issues arose at this more recent Board meeting. Asked afterwards, members deferred questions to Eversley Bradwell, who didn’t attend Tuesday.
By a rough count, between 20 and 40 students join the school-sponsored overseas journeys, which take place between late-March and early-April.
Officials stress no tax money gets spent. Parents either pay the cost, or fundraising efforts raise the expenses for lesser-advantaged students who want to go.
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