Tompkins Legislators target 2 per cent tax levy hike for ‘25
by Robert Lynch, May 1, 2024
It’s a time-honored, late-April tradition. Members of Tompkins County Legislature come as close as the law allows to holding a private meeting. There’s no video stream. No one takes minutes. A plastic waste basket wedged to hold open the otherwise-locked door of the County Health Department Building marked the only step lawmakers took to maintain compliance with New York’s Open Meetings Law. No other reporters attended Tuesday night’s legislative “Budget Retreat,” though they could have. It’s not always done, but the County’s Director of Communications issued a five-paragraph news summary the next day. It covered the meat of the moment, but failed to capture its flavor. .
The Budget Retreat becomes the first opportunity for the County Administrator and budget staff to rough-in estimates and brief lawmakers on the upcoming Tompkins County Budget. Administrator Lisa Holmes, who’ll retire at year’s end, did the honors Tuesday night.
And taken in total, her message was somber. A combination of factors, including omnipresent state mandates and surprisingly stagnant sales tax revenues, could bring a 5.9 per cent rise in next year’s property tax levy just to keep in place the programs that already exist.
But legislators didn’t buy it. “I would be appalled if we went out to our constituents and say we go at or above the (projected) state tax cap of five per cent,” Budget Committee Chair Mike Lane remarked at the meeting..
Note that Albany’s predicted tax cap—the one computed for our county’s government—is 5.06%. That’s considerably higher than the close to two per cent tax cap often prescribed. Nonetheless, even this higher cap became a threshold no legislator in the room Tuesday night appeared willing to cross.
Instead, the legislative pushback to Holmes’ budget numbers spoke of frugality. And it foretold of a hectic summer ahead for a lame-duck Administrator and her colleagues on the third floor of the Old Jail Building.
Taking a series of straw polls that carry no official standing, legislators at the Retreat targeted a 2025 hike in the Tompkins County property tax levy of an even two per cent. It would be the same percentage increase by which the County levy rose this current year.
By maintaining the 2025 levy hike at two per cent, administrators and legislators will need to cut just over $2 Million from the “maintenance of effort” budget Holmes presented to the Legislature Tuesday. Just where those cuts will be made across County Government’s more than two dozen departments, lawmakers will gladly let Holmes decide from now until budget season in September.
“We can tell ourselves we have to rein ourselves in, but we actually have to do that,” Town of Ithaca legislator Amanda Champion acknowledged.
“We’ve gotta’ show some discipline,” Groton Republican Lee Shurtleff counseled his fellow lawmakers.
“We’ve got to cut.” Budget Chair Lane echoed. “And how we get there is the question.”
Getting to wherever “there” is could prove difficult. Department heads notoriously stand their ground on money. And the many agencies that also suck annually on the teats of County Government will want their own usual share too. An effort near meeting’s end to hold agencies to either a two per cent or one per cent increase in their next year’s awards went nowhere, neither option finding majority support.
“This isn’t a year when you’re going to be able to do much magic,” Shawna Black, last year’s Legislature Chair, acknowledged. “This is going to be the year when we’re going to make hard decisions.”
“Prioritization” was the most common buzzword at Tuesday’s Retreat. Black mentioned it. Former Budget Chair Deborah Dawson said it as well.
“Start with the department heads,” Dawson instructed. “Prioritize the programs in your department,” Dawson said she would tell each middle-manager. “This is not a pretty picture.”
Perhaps the perceived privacy of the meeting prompted startling candor. Even the most sacred of the sacred cows in politically-correct County Government did not graze in peace. If not sent to the slaughterhouse, at least one or two were given a budgetary kick in the rump by those with questioning minds.
“We have to look at some of the recent initiatives,” Mike Lane said. He specifically referenced the Reimagining Public Safety initiative, the Ithaca City-Tompkins County collaborative constructed after the 2020 George Floyd killing in response to a long-forgotten Governor Andrew Cuomo dictate. Reimagining has spawned a cornucopia of race-sensitive policing reforms that employ staff, redirect priorities and cost plenty of cash.
Reimagining Public Safety, Lane stated “needs to have a hard look.” That’s all Lane dared say.
The “maintenance of effort” budget that Lisa Holmes brought to the April 30th Retreat would add $3.152 Million to this year’s $53.4 Million County Tax Levy, thereby producing the 5.9 per cent increase. If adopted—and right now, judging from Tuesday’s discussion, it’s not likely to be adopted—Holmes’ “maintenance” plan would add $155 to the tax bill on a median-priced Tompkins County home.
By contrast, a two per cent levy increase would add $100 to the median home’s tax bill. Keeping the levy unchanged from the current year would add $73. Although the logic proves hard to follow, the baked-in increase flows from the fact that housing inflation has raised the median Tompkins County home’s price from $249,000 to $300,000 between 2023 and now.
If a two per cent tax levy increase became the ceiling at Tuesday night’s Retreat, it was not the floor. Some, particularly Dryden’s Greg Mezey, would have cut the levy lower. And Mezey attempted to do so.
“The base line should be what the levy was last year,” Mezey said. “I’m not of the mindset where we can keep taxing, and taxing, and taxing, and taxing, and taxing.”
Mezey joined legislators Lee Shurtleff and Ulysses’ Anne Koreman in opposing the two per cent straw poll consensus embraced by 11 others. Instead, Mezey proposed reversing the current year’s levy increase and cutting the 2025 levy two per cent below what it is now. Mezey’s attempt failed, yet it secured five votes, including the support of Lansing’s Mike Sigler, now a candidate for State Senate.
Losing six votes to eight was a mid-ground attempt of sorts. It would have kept the 2025 levy the same as this year’s. Lane gave up before calling a vote on a one per cent increase.
Newfield-Enfield’s Randy Brown insisted that current budget estimates fail to gauge accurately the strength of Tompkins County’s fiscal reserves. Brown said some money simply doesn’t get counted. Brown also suggested raising the Hotel Tax by one per cent, though any revenue generated from that source would need to be dedicated to tourism promotion.
Among the many drains on Tompkins County resources is the money-losing airport. Holmes’ budget would suck $683,000 from the fund balance to bail out the over-built, but now under-utilized airfield. Brown and others suggested the drain could be plugged in other ways, perhaps through new user fees.
Among the prime cost-drivers to the projected 2025 budget, as Holmes outlined them, were projected employee wage hikes, expected to add $2.3 Million to the budget, or 4.3 per cent added to the levy. The County’s Capital Program would add $1.38 Million, or 2.58 per cent. That capital spending would include continuing first steps toward a $40 Million downtown Center of Government.
And state mandates always proliferate. Some spending, notably in the Department of Social Services, gets locked-in; it remains all that Albany says it must be. And tucked away within the Health Department’s proposed budget is an added $300,000 to cover mandated psychiatric services, described by Holmes as money to care for criminal defendants unfit to stand trial.
In the past, County Government has relied on mushrooming Sales Tax revenue to prop up its budget. For the moment, that may not prove possible. First quarter sales tax receipts this year actually fell more than two per cent from those for the same quarter in 2023. The Administrator’s budget reflected the new reality. It dropped projected Sales Tax revenue slightly.
“I wish that the Sales Tax did not seem to be doing what we do not want it to do,” legislator Rich John remarked. “I’m nervous we may not see the revenue coming in on Sales Tax.”
Rich John’s view of the Sales Tax spilled over to his observation of the “maintenance of effort” budget in general and the sizable tax hike it predicted.
“A six per cent levy increase is very different than what we have done in the past,” John observed. “I think we need to be a little more pessimistic.”
One area where Tompkins County Government may save is in an area where administrators might wish they didn’t have to scrimp. County positions are increasingly going unfilled. The current employee vacancy rate, Holmes reported, is 12.5 per cent.
“It’s a function of the low unemployment rate and the shortage of workers,” Holmes said.
Holmes’ projected budget assumes a five per cent vacancy rate for the year ahead, up from a two per cent vacancy forecast for 2024.
Some legislators, like Mezey, saw a silver lining in that vacancy cloud. With positions open, people aren’t drawing paychecks. Raising the vacancy projection to reflect current reality, up to maybe 12 per cent, they argued, could shave burdens from the budget.
Lisa Holmes’ “maintenance of effort” budget, even with its 5.9 per cent tax hike, wasn’t even the most expansive (and expensive) option put before legislators Tuesday. It had its bigger cousin, the “beyond maintenance of effort” alternative. The “beyond” budget would tack on largely-unspecified additions like supplemental aid for the TCAT transit service, additional support for TC3, and cost-of-living adjustments for nonprofit agencies. This larger budget would hike the tax levy by as much as 6.24 per cent. Reading the room Monday, consider this pricier alternative dead on arrival.
Every vote taken by legislators Tuesday night went officially unrecorded. It carried no true standing. Much could change between now and September when real legislative budget crunching begins. So the two per cent levy benchmark much touted Tuesday could be cast in cream cheese, not stone.
It was the Budget Retreat’s tone that proved most meaningful. At least for the moment, at the Tompkins County Legislature, frugality is “in;” extravagance is “out.”
“We’re going to look at trimming down our government,” Shawna Black admitted. Time will tell if Black’s pronouncement holds true.
###
Posted Previously; the Enfield Franchise talks:
Dan, the Cable Guy
Enfield taps Pittsburgh hired gun to haggle with Haefele
Reporting and Analysis by Robert Lynch, April 24, 2024
Enfield’s ten-year cable TV franchise with Haefele Connect has run out. Why someone forgetfully let it expire 18 months ago is a question all its own deserving an answer. But a more pressing inquiry at the moment is how we, Town Government, should negotiate a new Haefele agreement.
This Councilperson would prefer direct, across-the table, face-to-face discussions with owner Lee Haefele and his staff. That’s how it’s been done in the past. But that’s not how the Town Board’s majority wants it done now. Everyone but this writer demands that the Town of Enfield speak only through a high-powered, Pittsburgh-based law firm. The majority will prevail. The lawyers will move in. And one way or another, you, Enfield’s taxpayers, will pay the bill for them and suffer any consequences they inflict.
“Getting outside expertise is just wise,” Supervisor Stephanie Redmond argued before her Town Board April 10th. “When you’re not highly educated on the subject, you look for outside expertise. That is a matter of best interests of the Town,” she insisted.
By a vote of three-to-one, with this Councilperson, Robert Lynch, a determined and opinionated dissenter, the Enfield Town Board April 10th engaged the Cohen Law Group of Pittsburgh, and its principal, Dan Cohen, to negotiate the Haefele franchise renewal. The Cohen firm specializes in cable negotiations for municipalities. Dan Cohen served on the Pittsburgh City Council for a dozen years. He claims to have led efforts to regulate cable rates in that city, an initiative that led to FCC-demanded rebates for cable subscribers there.
Cohen Law purports to have helped more than 500 local governments over six states negotiate cable agreements. As approved by the Town Board this month, Cohen will charge Enfield a flat $8,900 fee.
“Franchise renewal is the best opportunity for the Town to obtain significant benefits and assert its legal rights with its cable operator,” Cohen Law stated in the second paragraph of its ten-page engagement proposal. The letter, itself is as long as the most recent franchise agreement between Enfield and Haefele. “Our objective will be to negotiate a new franchise agreement that addresses the changes since the last franchise and secures increased financial and legal benefits for the Town,” Cohen’s pitch to Enfield stated.
The company now known as Haefele Connect, based in Spencer, NY, began stringing TV cables through Enfield in 1984. Initially, it limited its service to homes along NY Routes 79 and 327, serving only Enfield’s residential backbone, with a few excursions up adjoining roads. The initial franchise reported a “basic service area” of 321 homes. Today, Haefele reaches the vast majority of Enfield residences.
Haefele’s initial 10-year contract with Enfield in 1984 carried a 5-year renewal option. Subsequent renewals occurred in 2001 and 2012. The Town Board’s 2012 meeting’s minutes reported that Enfield’s long-time municipal attorney, Guy Krogh, had first reviewed the final draft handed him by then-Supervisor Roy Barriere. Krogh had suggested minor changes and then handed the contract back. Quite likely, Barriere and Haefele had negotiated the agreement by themselves.
On October 10, 2012, Roy Barriere opened the required Public Hearing on the proposed ten-year Haefele contract. No one from the public spoke. Barriere closed the hearing three minutes thereafter. Later in the meeting, the Town Board, after limited discussion, ratified the contract unanimously.
But that was then; this is now. Stephanie Redmond, not Roy Barriere, now leads the Enfield Town Board.
“So after talking with Cohen Law, it appears that we have missed out a lot,” Redmond told the Town Board on this most recent April night. “And we could have been having income of over $50,000 a year, based on some of the things that he was mentioning.”
The money Redmond talked about is commonly referred to as a “franchise fee.” It’s a percentage of a cable operator’s gross receipts forwarded as revenue to the Town. The 1984 and 2001 Enfield agreements had each imposed a one per cent (1%) franchise fee on Haefele’s service. The 2012 agreement did not. Operators tack franchise fees onto subscribers’ bills.
“I’ve contacted all the other town supervisors around. They’re all getting franchise fees, and they’re all getting other kickbacks,” Redmond told our Board. “We are not getting anything like that, and to the tune of like $50,000 a year, which I know our pocketbooks could really, really enjoy.”
The Supervisor also claimed that with wise, skilled counsel, Enfield may be able to twist Lee Haefele’s arm to extend cable service to Enfield’s still-unserved areas, even though federal regulations customarily limit a municipality’s leverage over a cable operator to the television side of its business, not to the realm of broadband Internet.
“Three times in our Town’s history, we have negotiated contracts,” I informed the Board regarding the Haefele agreements, “and we have done it in a very non-confrontational and collegial way with a very good small business that provides better cable service for this Town than most other towns and the City of Ithaca enjoy.”
Among cable TV service providers in Tompkins County, Haefele in Enfield stands as the outlier. For Ithaca and most other places, Charter-Spectrum is the dominant hard-wired operator. It’s the largest multichannel video service provider in the nation. Spectrum’s higher rates, monopolistic conduct, and notorious poor customer service are demerits best not inflicted upon Enfield’s residents.
Spectrum is “way too much money for way too little, and it’s unreliable,” Dryden Town Supervisor Jason Leifer famously told a Tompkins County Council of Governments (TCCOG) meeting in August 2021. Leifer hasn’t changed his mind since. Dryden has launched its own municipal broadband service as a head-to-head competitor with Spectrum. At an earlier 2021 TCCOG meeting, shared results of an online customer survey gave Haefele Connect a 3.7 rating on a scale of zero to five; Spectrum-Ithaca a mere 2.3.
“We’ve got a good cable provider, and I don’t want to mess it up,” I told the Enfield Town Board during our 13-minute pointed go-around before we voted on Cohen Law’s engagement. “I don’t want to lawyer this up where we’ve got to have a hot-shot Pittsburgh attorney going down and talking with Lee Haefele. He’s going to have to get his attorney, and it’s going to get all lawyered up. And pretty soon, I fear, Lee Haefele will clap his hands and say, ‘That’s enough, Enfield; I’ll sell it to Spectrum,’ and then we’ll be stuck with Spectrum.”
“We are not negotiating this contract with Spectrum. We are negotiating it with Haefele,” Redmond apologetically responded, her counter-argument quite obviously missing my point. Redmond said the person she spoke to at Cohen Law showed no inclination to “stick it to Haefele.”
“I don’t see this as an acrimonious discussion,” Enfield’s Supervisor maintained. “I see this as we’re just updating their franchise agreement that’s sorely in need of updates.”
Just what kinds of revisions, outside of imposing a franchise fee, Redmond failed to specify that night.
“There was a lot with this that he was going through that—I mean, I don’t even know the language of it,” Redmond conceded following her Cohen conversation. “And I don’t even know the different types of, you know, bandwidths that are out there,” the Supervisor qualified. “That’s not my expertise.”
But in Redmond’s opinion, past home-grown franchise negotiations were much too hurried, too non-critical, and too deferential to the cable operator. The Town Board in 2012 “considered what seemed easy,” Redmond concluded. And when she most recently presented to Krogh and Cohen the now-expired contract (the one Krogh had signed-off on a dozen years ago), they were each quick to fault it.
“Both Guy and Cohen looked at it and went like, ‘Whooo, you guys have been going off of this for the last ten years, huh? It isn’t that good.’”
“Where are the complaints from the people in Enfield?” I offered the Supervisor in rebuttal. “I have not heard one person complain about cable TV service in this town. There are a few people who’ve been complaining about the fact that broadband doesn’t go everywhere. Guess what? Every town in Tompkins County has that problem.”
Later during the April 10th meeting, the Enfield Town Board endorsed a Resolution supporting an effort for Tompkins County to spend $100,000 toward launching a program aimed at filling in broadband Internet’s gaps county-wide, including in Enfield. The Tompkins County Legislature approved the expenditure April 16th and established a partnership with Point Broadband to serve the identified unserved areas. In Enfield, Point Broadband would likely contract with Haefele to string the cables and provide the service.
The lure of franchise fees stood most on the mind of the Town Board’s majority during the April meeting. Supervisor Redmond and this Councilperson carried most of the discussion. Councilperson Cassandra Hinkle participated minimally. Colleague Melissa Millspaugh, at home with a new baby and attending remotely that night, remained quiet. Yet both Hinkle and Millspaugh joined the Supervisor in supporting Dan Cohen’s retention. The remaining Board member, Jude Lemke, excused that night, had in a prior meeting expressed her support for specialized legal help in the franchise talks.
“We talk about all these franchise fees,” I reminded the Town Board that night. “Those franchise fees get tacked onto the cable bill. They are nothing more than an excise tax. You’re not drawing this money out of the cable company’s own resources. You’re taxing our residents, and a very regressive tax to boot,” I continued. “Because no matter how nice a house you have, how expensive it is, how much income you have, you’re still going to pay that same $3, $4, $5-a-month to the Town of Enfield as a tax.”
But dollar signs aside, the retention of Cohen law so much departs from past practice. I quoted to the Board from Page 3 of Cohen Law’s pitch to Enfield:
“CLG has developed a three-step approach to cable franchise renewal projects. The first is to identify the client’s specific needs…. Second, we negotiate firmly and deliberately with the cable operator in order to reach agreement in a timely fashion….” (The third step is cost-effectiveness for the client.)
“Firmly and deliberately; that means adversarial,” I stated to the Board as the irrefutable message.
“He’s going to talk to us first” Redmond replied softly. “And we can say, ‘Hey, we really like Haefele. Can you be very friendly with negotiations? We really like them, and we want them to stay.’ They can say all those things.”
“I just think it’s really important for us to have someone that has expertise in the field to give us all the information that we need that we don’t have, nobody on this Board has,” the Supervisor assessed.
“This is $8,900,” this Councilperson reminded everyone who cared to listen. “By voting for this, Resolution tonight, we’re committing the Town to spend $8,900 that I can’t spend in good conscience.”
****
Town Board majority votes carry a collective voice. Yet no individual Board member ever loses a voice of his own. After the 3:1 vote, this Councilperson informed the Board he would attempt his own meeting with Lee Haefele or his designee to revive the strategy that seemed to work so well in the past and discuss informally with the owner where cable talks should go.
“Destroy everything before it even starts,” Supervisor Redmond muttered, mostly under her breath. “This gets us off on a really nice foot. I hope you have a really wonderful discussion.”
The Town Board that night then went on to other business. We still have cable—and Haefele—for now. We also have a legal bill to pay.
###
Posted Previously; about the Ithaca Schools
Finding the Fiscal Off-Ramp
ICSD Board trims budget, levies, amid taxpayer backlash
by Robert Lynch, April 18, 2024
Katie Apker, Ithaca School Board member, put the question to Board President Sean Eversley Bradwell some three and a half hours after the Board began talking budgets Tuesday night, talking specifically about a nearly $171 Million budget for 2024-25 that many taxpayers despise. “What are you proposing, Sean?” Apker asked, seeking some direction on whether the Board should trim the proposal or adopt it as is.
“I propose that we go home and go to bed,” a weary Eversley Bradwell answered.
But they didn’t, not yet. A few minutes later, Board Vice President Moira Lang pulled her fiscal compromise out of the ashes of protracted indecision; put it to a vote, and the Board passed it. And when it did, Ithaca City School District (ICSD) taxpayers got at least a sliver of relief.
Closing a meeting that began with the closest thing to a taxpayer revolt that the Ithaca district has seen in many a year, the Board of Education, voting eight-to-one, trimmed-down both spending and the tax rate , It sent to voters a 2024-25 Ithaca Schools’ budget only a percentage point leaner than the one first proposed, but with its tax impact leveraged downward.
School Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown had proposed the District spend $170.9 Million and hike next year’s tax levy a full 12.14 per cent. The Board’s compromise trimmed $2,000,000 from Dr. Brown’s total. It tapped reserve funds to find another Two Million and lowered the proposed tax levy increase to 8.43 per cent. Maybe it’s not enough of a cut to satisfy the toughest critics, but at least it’s an acknowledgement of attempted compromise.
Ithaca voters will decide the budget in a referendum May 21st.
Residents are saying “this is going to be hurtful no matter which way we go,” Sean Eversley Bradwell acknowledged as the Board agonized over whether to reduce spending by millions or simply adopt the Superintendent’s proposal intact. “If we can find a balance to minimize the hurt both as an organization as well as to lessen the tax burden on real folks and real families and real money, I would prefer we go that route.”
Tuesday’s marathon meeting started with a line of 16 speakers, only one them an ICSD teacher. Each took the allotted three minutes to address Superintendent Brown’s proposed spending plan, the one with the 12 per cent tax levy hike. Spending in it would rise nearly eight per cent over the year. Only that lone teacher praised the budget. The other 15 speakers denounced it.
“I don’t see anything that resembles fiscal management,” Michael Hayes, a senior citizen, told the Board. “I understand that the Superintendent’s salary is greater than the Vice President of the United States,” Hayes asserted, “one of the highest in the State of New York… that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either.”
“The community needs some relief,” Jeff Lower told the Board. Real estate agent Susan Lustick earned audience applause—as did many others of a similar mind—when she took aim at the skyrocketing housing assessments and the rising property taxes that predictably follow.
“People are upset because there’s no rhyme or reason” to the assessment increases, Brian Welsh remarked. “I think everyone in this room has a responsibility to be loud and vocal about what this budget’s going to do.”
John Rice asked why it costs $35,000 a year to educate a school student in Ithaca, a figure that’s higher than in many other places. Anita Graf home schools her kids. She wished she had $35,000 a year to teach each of them.
“There are trade-offs,” Graf told the Board. “And you cannot have everything.” Graf continued, “We would like a magic wand, and we would like everybody to have everything that they want, but that isn’t the reality…. I think you have to do more to figure out how to carefully spend what you already have.”
Erin Croyle was the only Ithaca School Board member to oppose Moira Lang’s $2 Million budget cutting compromise. Before dissenting on Lang’s $168.9 Million initiative, Croyle cast the only vote to endorse the alternative; namely the adoption of Superintendent Brown’s original budget. Erin Croyle has two disabled students. What makes Ithaca exceptional, she maintained, is that it hires the staff and spends the money to put special needs students in General Education classrooms—not in Special Ed— and then check on their needs once they get there.
“We’re talking about supporting all students in General Ed classrooms,” Croyle stressed. “That means smaller class sizes. That means that in addition to teachers, you have co-teachers, you have integrated co-teaching, you have speech therapists… you have all this extra staff supporting students who have every right to be in those classrooms.”
“The assessments are really kicking my butt,” Croyle acknowledged. Yet Croyle provided the evening’s strongest defense of high-end staffing, specifically recognizing how instructors at DeWitt Middle School contacted her when her Down Syndrome child had a “mental health crisis.” Rather than expel her son, Croyle said, they contacted her and did so “because they don’t see the joy that he has.”
“One teacher is not enough in a classroom y’all,” Croyle insisted. “That’s why it costs $35,000 a student.”
Jill Tripp sat next to Croyle at the Board’s meeting table. Tripp was thinking that night more about dollars than joyful spontaneities. Tripp floated among the toughest belt-tightening scenarios. With a deep-slashing 20 per cent cut rejected as to nobody’s liking, Tripp floated both the $2 Million spending reduction eventually adopted, and also a more aggressive $6 Million cut.
“I did not find the Six Million cut undoable,” Tripp said. And the question, she asked, is, “How much pain (do) we want to cause to get how much savings?”
Most on the Board saw a 6-9 Million cut in Superintendent Brown’s budget a bridge too far. And the larger cut received little more consideration.
With a 6-9 Million spending reduction, “we are talking about increasing class sizes significantly,” Superintendent Brown warned. And while he promised any cut would first come in administration—despite a lobbying effort afoot to add associate principals at each elementary school—Brown predicted that in terms of overall staff cuts, “We’re talking about dozens.”
And what about Dr. Brown’s own lofty pay? He had an answer that some might challenge:
“They can say what they want about my salary, but you’re required to have a Superintendent here. And if I’m not here, you’ll have to pay a Superintendent a similar salary if you want to look at costs and competition and all that.”
Superintendent Brown’s contractual salary for the present year tops $269,000. (By comparison, Vice President Kamala Harris might earn a bit more than Ithaca’s Superintendent, but if so, not a lot more.)
“Let’s just acknowledge what we’re talking about,” Board member Eldred Harris put to the record. “It’s not technology, it’s not computers, this is people. These are people critical to the mission that we’ve stated that we said we want for our community to have.”
“What’s really the option?” Harris questioned, “To become a different school district, to not satisfy the increasing demands of teachers and children with special concerns?”
“Happy Days are done. Ozzie and Harriet are done,” Harris reminded colleagues. “We have an increasing number of children coming here in different circumstances; they’re not in dual marital households, they’re not coming to us with all the equipment that we want them to have.”
Without a proper, well-funded education, Harris warned, Ithaca could have lower graduation rates, increased homelessness, and more people in jail.
Eldred Harris, of any Board member, came closest to Erin Croyle’s way of thinking. He seconded Croyle’s motion to ratify Luvelle Brown’s original budget, the one with the double-digit levy hike. But after he did, Harris voted against what Croyle had wanted and supported Moira Lang’s compromise instead. Harris is running for reelection this year. He can feel the political winds. After the meeting, Harris asked this writer to sign his own nominating petition. (I politely declined.)
The School Board agonized, and agonized, and agonized still more, for well over an hour that night over whether, and if so, by how much to cut the budget. For a good deal of that time, indecision seemed to win the moment. State law would have given the Board until April 25th to finalize its figures. An additional, special meeting seemed more than likely.
“Ask Dr. Brown to come back with a however-much lower budget,” Jill Tripped asked, suggesting either a reasoned delay or endorsing what the Superintendent had brought before them.
“We need to be more specific about a number,” Lang interjected. And as Lang moved the ball closer to a decision, verbal equivocation gradually peeled away.
Although the adopted compromise set the overall numbers for the mid-May referendum, the specifics of where the knife will slice to find the $2 Million in savings were not decided that night.
“I don’t want to get into the minutiae of going line by line,” Board member Karen Yearwood counseled. And colleagues agreed with her. Most likely the Superintendent and fellow administrators will exact the personnel and programmatic pain in case-by-case decisions over the summer.
There were a couple of whipping boys flogged at Tuesday’s meeting. And both protesting taxpayers and dismayed school board members took their turns. One was the Tompkins County Department of Assessment, which had mailed property owners letters that attempted to predict—misleadingly—the taxing impact of their assessment increases. The department based estimates not on next year’s proposed levy, but on the levy attached to the old budget approved last May.
But the second target of attack was the State of New York, which both relies too heavily, most agreed, on the local property tax to fund education, and also employs funding formulas that place a proportionately heavier burden on Ithaca taxpayers than on those in many other districts.
“The wealthier we become, the less our state aid,” District Chief Operating Officer Amanda Verba explained with dismay. “And the only way we can close the gap is to raise the levy.”
Verba kept checking her phone. By the time the budget votes were cast, the Governor and State Legislature had not yet come to terms on their own spending plan and school aid formula. New York’s budget is already a half-month late.
“This is a terrible way to fund education,” Maura Lang said of the property tax.
The way we fund education is “not sustainable” and “nowhere near equitable,” Board President Eversley Bradwell conceded. Yet, fund it through the property tax the Board must, he said.
And as the public prepared to file out of York Lecture Hall and as the hours-long internal deliberation prepared to commence, Board President Eversley Bradwell had this admonition to aggrieved taxpayers in the room and online:
“Know that you are heard. Know that we understand the situation, myself and my family included,” he said. “And we will continue to use our collaborative expertise, empathy, love and wisdom to try to put forward a budget that we think our community can support.”
Will two million dollars in spending cuts and nearly four million dollars in taxation economies, coupled with a reduced 8.4 per cent increase in the tax levy placate an uneasy electorate? Will it satisfy people like Board members Harris and Croyle who fear kids will suffer as a result? The May referendum will answer those questions.
“I will vote. And I will go door to door to make as many of my neighbors know what has happened,” Jim Meehan, one of those who addressed the School Board Tuesday, promised when it was the 12 per cent tax increase that stood before him. Will eight per cent still wear down his shoe leather? Time will tell.
###
Earlier about the budget:
ICSD Board scratches its head to soothe the budget bite
by Robert Lynch; April 11, 2024
“We want to be the best school district in America.”
Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown, to the Ithaca School Board’s Finance Ctte. April 9.
Maybe the big story emerging from this week’s meeting of the Ithaca Board of Education’s Finance Committee wasn’t what happened, but rather what never did. Six of the School Board’s nine members, conferring together, couldn’t come to terms on how to cut a 12.1 per cent increase in the projected tax levy a proposed 2024-25 school district budget would impose on residents.
No resolutions were offered or voted on by the committee at its April 9th meeting. And one must wonder whether the entire Board will come up with a compromise in time to meet a self-set goal of finalizing the budget just seven days later, on Tuesday, April 16th.
“The good news is we’re not voting tonight,” Finance Committee Chair Eldred Harris told Board members. Yet Harris also interjected, “Where are our math teachers? Do we have any math teachers here?”
Given how indecisive the six who must later vote on that budget were despite an hour and 20 minutes of discussion, it’s quite likely the Board will hold off a final budget decision until a potential special meeting later in the month. An administrator stated that New York State demands a Board decision by April 25th.
Ithaca district residents will themselves get to vote on the budget May 21.
On March 26th, Ithaca City School District (ICSD) Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown presented the Board his proposed nearly $171 Million next year’s spending plan. It would hike spending by 7.79 per cent from the current year’s budget, but elevate the tax levy on property owners by a much-larger 12.14 per cent figure.
Board members and district officials made it clear this past Tuesday they’d heard from nervous, even angry, taxpayers. But they also agonized between conflicting objectives: keeping tax bills from spiraling out of control, but also meeting their goal of providing Ithaca’s students a world-class education.
“We are living in a high-tax area and our assessment values are skyrocketing, and its falling on the backs of homeowners,” Superintendent Brown acknowledged. “Trust me, I go to Wegmans often and I hear it, and I feel it as a community member.”
“We know that,” Brown said. And then he pivoted. “And I also know that the kind of shift that we would have to make of not having our $170 Million fund request would be uncomfortable for this community as well.”
“We want to be inclusive. It costs. We want to be equitable. It costs. We want to be the best school district in America. It is expensive,” Brown said.
And to some disgruntled Ithaca taxpayers, Dr. Brown’s words only confirm and validate what they’ve suspected all along: namely that the Ithaca City School District spends beyond its community’s means, seeking instructional excellence at an unaffordable price. Whether true or not, the notion has a way of resonating when local property assessments are rising annually by an average 20 per cent.
“I think what many people are asking for is that we want to trust you,” Board member Jill Tripp said she senses constituents telling the Board and administration. “We’ve trusted you for years. But we feel like there’s some things in the district that could be looked at more carefully. There’s probably some positions that could be cut. There may even be some programs that could be cut back,” Tripp inferred taxpayers are thinking.
Tripp continued, “We’re abdicating our responsibility as a Board for us to just say, ‘take it or leave it,’ when many, many well-meaning people are saying we can’t just take that; we have to know that you’re doing your best.”
Committee Chair Harris acknowledged Tripp’s concerns. And colleague Garrick Blalock agreed that “there’s a pain there that people are legitimately feeling.” Yet Tripp was the only Board member that day to get specific with her suggestions. She urged administrators identify ways to cut $2 Million from the budget Superintendent Brown had proposed.
Blalock, meanwhile, urged reconsideration of a revenue-raiser briefly floated, then quickly dropped amid public outcry a few years ago, namely the ICSD imposing a tax on utilities, such as on cell phones, electric bills, and the like.
“Utilities tend to be a fairly stable thing to tax,” Blalock reasoned, though perhaps conveniently forgetting how rapidly NYSEG bills escalate. There’s a second benefit, he said. “It also has the feature of asking residents who aren’t single-family homeowners to chip in a little bit.”
Blalock conceded that a utility tax “was not a winner the last time it was discussed.” Administrators cautioned that imposing such a tax takes time and would not be available in this current budget cycle.
Amanda Verba, ICSD’s Chief Operating Officer, had laid out for Board members that night several budget-cutting options, choices not yet posted on the School District’s website. One option would slash-and-burn with a 20 per cent spending reduction. Tripp called that choice “a straw man.” Said Tripp, “Nobody’s looking at that.” On her calculator, Verba projected were 20 per cent cuts to come solely from instructional staff, 618 Ithaca teachers would lose their jobs.
A mid-range option, one holding greater promise, though never fleshed-out with specifics, would strike some middle ground between the current year’s $158.9 Million ICSD budget and the $170.9 Million in next year’s spending Dr. Brown has proposed. It would reduce the levy increase down to 7.1 per cent. And it would cut proposed spending by $3.4 Million.
“Three-point-four Million is not insignificant,” Brown said. He estimated it could idle 60 or more employees. “We will start with administration,” he promised. “We would do that first.” But then, Brown said, close to $3 Million more in added savings would need to be found. “And that’s real programs,” he warned.
Verba cautioned that budgeting to a number, rather than to a need is something foreign to where she works. “That is not the way that we do the budget in the Ithaca City School District,” Verba told the Board. “However, if that is something that we want to begin in fiscal year ’25 and pick a number and then drive to our values and our principles and our vision and our mission and our goals and our priorities, that will be something that we will retrain our brains to do.”
But training kids rather than retraining themselves to budget backwards is what most on the Ithaca Board of Education find the higher priority. And teaching to the taxpayers’ test for them won’t come easy.
“If we’re looking for any deep dive, it’s personnel that usually goes first, and are we willing to do that?” Board member Karen Yearwood asked. She then promptly answered her own question. “And I know we’re not,” she said, “so we have to be honest about it.”
Someone—committee chair Harris didn’t say whom—had proffered that the ICSD set a tax levy increase equivalent to the Consumer Price Index, or about four per cent. That’s “very astute, but not exactly correct,” Harris cautioned. He employed a household analogy.
“If milk and sugar and bread and the cost of furniture has risen by four per cent because of inflation, we’re carrying those costs,” Harris explained. “If the cost of mowing the lawn and cleaning the windows and cleaning the pool and all the other staff considerations that we have to commit to outside of that inflationary increase rise also, you can see that an additional amount would be necessary on top of the inflationary amount that is baked into everybody’s budget.”
Eldred Harris is a lawyer, not an economist, so forgive him. An Ithaca School budget—past, present, and also future—covers labor cost as well as that of things a school district buys. Unless one embraces Dr. Brown’s stated, lofty goal of raising staff salaries a full 20 per cent over the next three years, a percentage increase of four per cent would cover everything, people as well as stuff.
Again, Ithaca School Board members are far away from nailing down a budget. They’ve got the month of April to do it. Their next bite of the budget apple happens on the 16th.
###
Funding Fears and Fighting Dogs
The unsettled future of Tompkins EMS Cost-Sharing
Reporting and analysis by Robert Lynch, April 5, 2024
Those among us old enough can recall how military hawks in the 1960’s employed the “Domino Theory” to justify the Vietnam War. If you don’t stop communists there, they argued, Chairman Mao would soon be landing his troops on the coast of California.
Of course, that never happened. And we all know how the Vietnam War turned out. But some could argue that the same fear about tumbling dominoes is playing out in real time this month in the chambers of the Tompkins County Legislature. And those who worry may be advancing scenarios equally as flawed.
On Tuesday, April second, Tompkins County launched its Rapid Medical Response (RMR) service. The program’s modest start-up employs three, white SUV’s and pickups, cast-offs from the Tompkins County motor pool. County Government hired a handful of Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT’s) to drive them. Strategically placed about the county, the RMR EMS units answer medical emergency calls during daytimes and on weekdays only. They do so—at least in theory—only when a rural volunteer rescue squad cannot respond itself.
No one opposes the service. The only question involves who will pay for it. A surprisingly generous state grant has covered this year’s initial cost. It’s the two-year pilot program’s second-year funding that’s divided opinions among legislators and municipal leaders.
“I think that the municipalities need to have a dog in this fight,” Dryden representative Mike Lane told his colleagues on the Tompkins County Legislature Tuesday night. “They need to be working partners with it,” Lane asserted. “I don’t think that the County should just automatically take this on.”
Lane’s comment fell five days after town and village board members, convened as the Tompkins County Council of Governments (TCCOG) March 28th, voted unanimously to endorse full Tompkins County funding of the program’s second year, a $510,000 expense. Rordan Hart, Mayor of Trumansburg, has become the driving force behind letting Tompkins County pay the full cost. Anne Koreman, Trumansburg’s (and northern Enfield’s) representative, has become Hart’s most vocal advocate within the Legislature.
“This is a service that encompasses all municipalities, and I don’t see how we can parse it up,” Koreman told the Legislature at its meeting.
The Enfield Town Board—at this Councilperson’s urging—unanimously endorsed Mayor Hart’s position by passing its own Resolution of support March 13th.
Yet a small, albeit persistent cadre of legislators, one that includes Dryden’s Lane and also the City of Ithaca’s Rich John, have for months sought municipal contribution to the RMR. They’ve floated various options. The currently-favored plan would have Tompkins County underwrite two-thirds of the 2025 expenses ($351,000), and have ten local municipalities divvy up the remaining burden. The cost-sharing model advanced at a meeting in late-February would draw $10,000 from next year’s Enfield Town budget.
But the argument is more than just about money. Tompkins County has plenty of cash. It’s about underlying fears of those elusive tumbling dominoes that drive key legislators to demand the towns contribute at least something toward the RMR service.
Most importantly, it’s a worry that when County Government steps in to help, town rescue squads will conveniently and predictably step back; they’ll withdraw from the effort and shirk their traditional, time-honored responsibilities. Arguably, it’s a worry nowhere founded in fact. But for Groton’s Lee Shurtleff Tuesday night, doomsday scenarios pervaded his remarks. They extended beyond a fire company’s EMT assignments to the ranks of firefighters themselves.
“Have we set a precedent that we’re going to step forward?” an animated Shurtleff asked fellow legislators that night. Could 12-hour–a-day EMT service, he said, grow to 24?
Shurtleff reached farther. “The next step is also going to be in the fire service, who has traditionally provided that first response. The fire service is unable to provide levels of support beyond basic fire services…. We’re going to see fire departments begin to shut down. Is the county going to be expected to step into that role?”
“We need to be looking ahead and not be expected to take on these things without some corresponding commitment and corresponding level of support from those who have traditionally raised the taxes to provide these services,” the wound-up Groton legislator, former Director of Tompkins County’s Department of Emergency Response, continued. “I could care less in many ways about how much the towns contribute back. What I care about is that there be an acknowledgement that these have traditionally been their services and that we’re going to work together to continue to provide these services.”
Lee Shurtleff’s Parade of Horribles about fire departments shutting down may not find a welcome reception in Enfield. Our taxpayers just invested more than $1 Million in principal and interest to buy a new fire truck. And our fire station stands nowhere near locking its doors. True, our EVFC always needs more volunteers. But what’s on the table now is merely how to pay for a trio of wannabe-flycars and the people who drive them, EMT’s at-the-ready sometimes and other times not.
Whoever hurt his or her hip at 9:20 AM, Tuesday, April second, made himself or herself an anonymous celebrity. That person became the first patient served by Tompkins County’s Rapid Medical Response system. Its EMT arrived at the scene seven minutes after the call came in. The transport ambulance, simultaneously dispatched, took a full 22 minutes.
“The take-away from this first call was that without this service, this person would have been alone on the ground in their house with a hip injury for 22 minutes until the transport unit arrived,” County Administrator Lisa Holmes informed the Tompkins County Legislature in her report that night. “So out of the gate, or at least with this example, it appears that the program is doing what it’s designed to do.”
Moments after Holmes said those words, the Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners convened its own meeting at the Enfield Fire Station. And at that session, leaders made it clear that aside from the new help gladly appreciated from Tompkins County, nothing has really changed.
“This program doesn’t mean our rescue squad is out of business,” Enfield Volunteer Fire Company President Dennis Hubbell told Fire Commissioners. “We will communicate that to members Thursday (training night),” Hubbell stressed.
Commissioners Chair Greg Stevenson agreed. “This does not supplant anything that’s in place.”
Tuesday morning’s inaugural call—the hip injury—was an “Alpha” call, second-to-the-bottom on a six-tiered hierarchy of medical emergencies. Enfield’s rescue squad doesn’t even answer “Alpha” calls. Few others in Tompkins County do either. So what Administrator Holmes talked about that night never idled a single community volunteer. Rather, it provided a heightened level of care. It didn’t relax any municipal burden.
In fact, Enfield Fire Chief Jamie Stevens recognized that by answering low-level, Alpha-type calls, the RMR could stretch itself thin. That white SUV could be attending a broken leg in southern Newfield while a more serious incident simultaneously calls out the Enfield rescue squad closer to home.
Stevenson told Chief Stevens that while he welcomes the new service, he also recognizes its limitations.
Tompkins County municipal leaders and Administrator Holmes will reconvene April 11th to discuss cost-sharing further.
“I prefer we don’t have another meeting,” legislator Koreman said, sensing no need to discuss cost-sharing any further. Nonetheless, the mid-April session will still be held. Koreman has argued that Tompkins County should regard the RMR service like the Sheriff’s Office; there for all regardless of need, regardless of a municipality’s ability to pay.
“I really do think the example of the Sheriff’s Office and how we fund that is really spot-on,” Caroline Supervisor Mark Witmer told TCCOG March 28th. Witmer spoke before TCCOG’s members unanimously adopted Mayor Rordan Hart’s resolution to back total County funding of the Rapid Medical Response service. “I think trying to designate how each community will benefit or differ—in the end, it will hurt us; it will create a vulnerability in the program.”
This Enfield Councilperson, Robert Lynch, agreed: “If somebody backs out, and another one backs out, and a third one backs out, that’s going to lead to a lot of animosity and rivalry among the municipalities that remain.” This writer reported hesitancy by City of Ithaca representatives at County Administration’s late-February meeting to participate fully in cost-sharing or to recognize participation’s benefits.
Under the cost-sharing model advanced at that February meeting, the City would pay-in more than any other municipality, $32,000, or one-fifth of the predicted $159,000 combined municipal share.
County legislators have credited their Chairman, Dan Klein for authoring the compromise cost-sharing model now under review. Because it seeks City participation, it would cost rural towns less than had previous formulas. In municipalities having their own paid ambulance services—including Ithaca—the plan would assess local governments at one dollar per resident. Non-ambulance towns, like Enfield, would pay $3.00 per head.
Conceding TCCOG was headed toward endorsing Mayor Hart’s proposal that day, Klein futilely defended his alternative. “The cost-sharing was going to distribute the costs a little more equitably among the people who aren’t already paying as much for emergency medical services,” Klein said.
“Your budgets are going to look a little better; Tompkins County’s budget is going to look a little worse,” the Legislature’s chair conceded, should County Government pay the full expense. But if that happens, he cautioned municipal leaders, “You, the towns, are hiding some of the costs from your constituents.”
Klein cited Ulysses as an example. Ulysses already contracts with Trumansburg Ambulance for emergency coverage. Its rejection of cost-sharing, Klein predicted, could impose a $2.00 per person burden on each of its taxpayers. Ulysses Supervisor Katelin Olson held a ready answer.
“I will tell property owners when they learn about this, if they do have concerns about paying more than their fair share, I will say that our ambulance system that we pay into with the Village of Trumansburg will be healthier because our neighbors are going to be healthier.” Olson specifically cited potential beneficiaries in Enfield.
“We often talk about in storm water that water doesn’t respect municipal boundaries. Well, in the EMS world, health emergencies don’t respect municipal boundaries as well,” Olson said. And embracing the Sheriff’s Department analogy, she added, “We all benefit by having healthy law enforcement. We will all benefit by having healthier EMS services.”
Trumansburg’s Mayor Hart, whose Resolution won TCCOG unanimous municipal support that day, commended Dan Klein’s cost-sharing comprise as “quite elegant,” qualifying his words, “as cost-sharing models go.” But the mayor stressed he’s looking beyond the immediate. “I’m really trying to look at this from the perspective of how do we bullet-proof this program for the long-term,” Hart told TCCOG.
Emergency response, Hart argued, is today an “intertwined network” and “not a local rescue matter.” And, he added, “Having the County fully fund it as a County program does better than any type of attempt to share the cost.”
To an extent, Rordan Hart and Lee Shurtleff are moving toward the same destination. They’d just each reach it by a different path. Hart would place this newly-evolving 21st Century rescue service, intertwined as it is, under Tompkins County’s full fiscal umbrella. Lee Shurtleff would keep base funding where it’s traditionally been, mostly within individual town fire service budgets.
“This conversation is important,” Shurtleff told those at the Legislature, “and it can’t just stop with one vote by one group that thinks the County should take it on 100 per cent,” a not-so-veiled reference to TCCOG’s recommendation.
“As far as a dog in the fight,” Shurtleff said, recalling colleague Mike Lane’s earlier remark, “all the dogs in the fight up until today were theirs, were the towns’ were the villages’, were the fire districts.”
To Shurtleff, dominoes may stand teetering, poised to fall, with burdens readying to shift in multiple ways from our town governments to those downtown.
A couple chairs down the table, Anne Koreman thought differently that night. The Ulysses representative expressed little concern about newly-shouldered long-term commitments or the setting of dangerous precedents. Instead, she kept it simple. Koreman narrowed the focus to just those three little white vehicles plying the roads of Tompkins County to attend to dislocated hips and whatever else may prompt a 911 call.
Of volunteer rescue ranks, Koreman said, “They’re really scared out there, to not be able to get to people in time. So this helps them, they said, to be able to sleep at night, to know that the County kind of—what they said to me—we have their back.”
###
Posted Previously:
“Cranes in the Sky” or letters in your mailbox
ICSD proposes levy hike 4x the Tax Cap
by Robert Lynch, March 30, 2024
Jay Franklin, Tompkins County’s Director of Assessment, gave members of the Tompkins County Council of Governments (TCCOG) Thursday, March 28th a tutorial on how his office’s revaluation of properties meshes with local government’s imposition of property taxes. Franklin defended his preferred practice of reassessing properties every year. He argued it prevents valuations from getting stale; assessments either under-valuing or over-valuing properties that have changed in selling price over time.
To that, this Councilperson, Enfield’s representative on TCCOG, raised a counter-argument Franklin acknowledged: Less-frequent reassessments may, in fact, serve a purpose.
“It does make the most logical sense,” I said, endorsing annual reassessment. “The problem is, it ignores human nature, and that is the human nature of the political class.”
I used the Ithaca City School District (ICSD) as the best example. Its budgeting policy has been on the record and in the news. School Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown recently boasted of his budget holding the tax rate steady. And school board member Eldred Harris has cited “cranes in the sky” to credit Dr. Brown’s stunning achievement to all that downtown construction.
“What it fails to take into consideration,” I told Franklin, “is the fact that assessments are going up from individual properties, and so what it allows is it allows a lot of mischief to be made by the political class.”
Call it “mischief” or call it just wise salesmanship. But when Dr. Brown presented his nearly $171 Million next year’s budget proposal to the Board of Education March 26th, he bragged more about tax rates than tax levies. The tax levy represents the true taxpayer cost of educating an Ithaca kid. The tax rate, in its simplest construction, is merely a mathematical derivative.
“This budget that we’re proposing will enable us to stabilize the tax rate and keep it low,” the Superintendent said.
But it’s the tax levy that New York regulators use to determine whether a school district complies with or goes above the state’s now penalty-free “Tax Cap.” ICSD administrators estimate the new tax cap at three per cent. Dr. Brown’s proposed 2024-25 budget would raise the tax levy by 12.14 per cent. Do the math. The levy increase would be more than four times the cap. And nobody at Tuesday’s School Board meeting talked seriously about staying within it.
“Keeping our tax levy at a three per cent increase, then we’re talking about a $9 Million reduction to what we’re proposing this evening,” Brown said. “That’s programs. That’s people. That’s a significant shift, and that’s not keeping up with even our contractual obligations.”
New York State once rewarded a school district’s frugality by providing taxpayers a rebate if a district stayed within the tax cap. Those days are gone. And schools pay no price should their budgets exceed Albany’s magic number. Taxing above the cap only requires that at least 60 per cent of voters approve a school budget in their May referendum.
One may recall that two years ago Newfield’s first-round rejected budget got into that super-majority bind. But Ithaca’s school electorate has consistently proven more obliging. Last year, the Ithaca budget passed with 73 per cent support.
Superintendent Brown and the school district’s Chief Operating Officer, Amanda Verba spent more than an hour last Tuesday outlining the proposed budget to Ithaca School Board members. A few voiced concerns about the increase, yet no one expressed outright opposition. And clearly the Administration put programs first, economies somewhere down the list.
“We are an excellent school district,” Brown insisted. “And we have asked for that, and we are getting it, and we are paying for it in an ongoing way.”
“I remind folks, nobody’s asking us to stop doing anything. They’re asking us to do more.”
“We have seen the most significant compensation increases in the school district’s history over the last decade,” Brown continued. “Now that’s taken a lot of work…. This budget will allow us to meet those contractual obligations… and I’m looking to do even more.”
At an earlier meeting, January 30th, Brown proposed leveraging Ithaca’s ever-growing assessments to provide a 20 per cent pay increase for all employees over the next three years. It was at that meeting when Eldred Harris made his “cranes in the sky” remark.
“So there are contractual agreements that the School District has entered into with bargaining units, and those are guaranteed to the folks,” Amanda Verba cautioned. “They have to receive the increases.”
In terms of raw spending, the District Administration’s $170.9 Million budget would rise by 7.79 per cent from this year’s budget of $158.58 Million. It’s a bigger percentage rise than a year ago, and an even bigger increase than the year before that.
Of the $170.9 Million in spending, nearly $120.8 Million would come through the tax levy. While the levy would climb by double-digits, the tax rate would remain same as the current year.
Part of the disproportionate 12.14 per cent rise in the projected levy comes from stagnant state aid, Albany assistance that could actually drop next year depending on ongoing state budget deliberations. Dr. Brown would also rather not draw down the school district’s fund balance, it’s year-to-year savings account. New York rules limit the fund balance set-asides to no more than four per cent of the schools’ budget. Verba said the current balance stands close to that limit right now, though Albany does little more than wag its finger should a district exceed it.
“If the Board determines that this is the year we want to use that (the fund balance) to balance the budget, just know that if we spend it, it will not be there for next year,” Verba warned. “You will have a double-problem then,” Verba said.
School Board member Adam Krantweiss, up for re-election this year, said he’s heard from taxpayers. And he relayed their concerns to colleagues that night.
“They’re wondering and hoping that there might be a way to have that eight per cent (total increase) reduced even if was by a few percent,” Krantweiss said. “And there are some ‘want’ items that could come out of the budget. I think a lot of people would appreciate that relief.”
“Most organization’s budgets are increasing,” Krantweiss acknowledged, “although this does seem like a larger than average increase.”
“I’ve heard those concerns, and I’ve shared those concerns and frustrations each year I’ve been here,” Superintendent Brown acknowledged. Yet he continued, “Our community wants some things. We are at an important time. We’re at an inflection point. I see this budget setting the community up for the next generation of learners.”
“There are some areas where we can make some adjustments,” Brown conceded, suggesting fund balances and future compensation increases as targets for trimming. “I propose something I think is fair, I think is something that will set us up,” he said, “but I’m open to the direction of the Board to what we do to adjust.”
The School Board’s Finance Committee will likely address the budget April 9th. The full Board next meets April 16th. Expect the Board to vote on the budget then.
When Ithaca School District voters go to the polls May 21st, they’ll not only vote on the budget, but also on the purchase of new high-efficiency buses and an ambitious $125 Million capital program, the heftiest capital request in the District’s recent history. Ithaca School District voters seldom reject such spending initiatives. Turnout for its elections is usually anemic. Therefore, the parents, teachers, and staff who do vote hold power to tip the scales in favor of their special interests.
And that “needs before, burdens” approach continued to invade the Superintendent’s remarks throughout his presentation, conveying an impression that a homeowner’s assessment increase is his or her own problem, not the School District’s.
“Our school district is not responsible for tax assessment increases,” Luvelle Brown stated candidly. “And even if we were to plan for what folks got in the mail this week or last week, that may shift. So it’s inappropriate for us to plan a budget based on individual property—even a large swath of property tax assessment increases, period.”
Once again, reliance turned to a stabilized tax rate. Let the impact of your individual tax bill fly where the Assessment Department takes it.
Assuming assessments increase to where Dr. Brown predicts they’ll be, the 2024-25 Ithaca School District tax rate would stabilize at $16.22 per thousand, the same rate as paid in bills last fall. By comparison, this year’s Enfield Town tax rate was less than half that level, or at about $7.20 per thousand. Tompkins County’s tax rate is lower still.
“Over 75 per cent of our budget comes from the tax levy,” Verba advised the school board. And it appears that for reasons not explained at Tuesday’s meeting, the Ithaca School District stands more tax-dependent than most others do.
“For some of our neighboring districts,” Superintendent Brown reported, “it’s almost a direct inverse.” For them, he said, “75 per cent is coming from federal and state dollars, 25 per cent is coming from the local tax levy…. It depends on community by community.”
But why is that? Yes, it might result from New York State funding formulas that often make no sense. But could it also be, as the Superintendent acknowledged that night, that the Ithaca District, and its voters who vote, demand educational excellence beyond what others provide and stand willing to have us all pay for it.
“There’s no new dollars coming from federal or state governments,” Dr. Brown told the Board. Other small-city districts, he cautioned, are reducing programs, increasing class sizes and closing schools. “I’m proposing a budget that won’t have us engage in that conversation,” he said, “because we’re going to absorb the loss of significant federal and state aid.”
But the taxpayer, of course, becomes Dr. Brown’s fiscal sponge. And when the tax bill arrives next October, Ithaca District voters may all-too-readily redirect their anger wrongly to the Assessment Director.
“When I hear discussions about the tax rate, that’s really hiding the tax levy,” Jay Franklin told TCCOG Thursday. “When we say we’re going to freeze tax rate increases, you kind of get into a hidden tax levy increase scenario.”
When adopting its budget, the Enfield Town Board seldom discusses the tax rate, only the levy. Enfield’s rate fell a bit for 2024, yet its Town tax levy rose by seven percent. The levy, not the rate, got the headlines. The Tompkins County Legislature seldom talks about the tax rate, either. The County’s rate tends to tumble like a stone, though the levy this year rose by two per cent. The levy typically becomes the driving force in most places except, most notably, at the Ithaca Schools.
Constant revaluation gives the ICSD a crutch, one it welcomes, and one it leans on. But if, for example, yearly reassessments were moved to a triennial cycle, the crutch could be leaned on only once every three years. And taking it away could bring with it a whole lot more transparency and fiscal discipline.
“We realize there are some unintended consequences that happen sometimes,” Franklin told municipal officials at TCCOG. “It’s hard to know whether it’s the best to change our system, or it’s best to educate school boards and town boards that may not be aware.”
Right now, education must suffice. The Ithaca City School District holds its budget hearing May 14th; its budget vote one week later. Get educated.
###
Posted previously:
Gas wells, jobs, and chicken coops
The fracking ban’s expansion hits the NYS Senate
by Robert Lynch; March 24, 2024
For Democrats, like our own State Senator, Lea Webb, it was all about safety. For Republicans, it was a probe for ulterior motives.
Following more than a half-hour’s debate packed with pointed exchanges last Wednesday, New York’s upper house gave final legislative approval and sent to Governor Kathy Hochul an expansion of the state’s decade-long ban on hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas. The revision would expand the existing prohibition to cover the use of carbon dioxide—in addition to water-based substances—as the propellant that cracks the shale, extracts the gas—and yes, creates high-paying jobs in the process.
Binghamton’s Webb sponsored the expanded fracking ban in the Senate. Ithaca’s Anna Kelles had done so in the Assembly. The Senate on March 20th endorsed Webb’s measure, 46 votes to 16. The Assembly granted Kelles’ identical bill passage, 98 votes to 50, eight days earlier. Governor Hochul has yet to sign or veto the legislation.
“It is important that we close the loophole with respect to this proposed practice before further issues ensue,” Webb insisted.
“As a representative of the Southern Tier, but more importantly, as a concerned citizen, I refuse to have my district, or quite frankly, any resident in the State of New York to be a guinea pig for a practice to have a ‘pilot,’ that we know that CO2 mining is quite simply hydrofracking, but just called by a different name,” Webb said, explaining her vote just before she cast it.
“This isn’t about energy,” Downstate Democrat Liz Krueger told the Senate about CO2 fracking. “This is a model that if it’s allowed to go forward would be killing people, destroying land, killing agriculture… I’m quite sure the Governor will sign this bill.”
For a dozen minutes Wednesday, Senator Webb faced grilling on the floor about her bill from a Republican Senator from the western Southern Tier, George Borello.
Borello’s central argument held that New York has lost countless jobs to frack-friendly Pennsylvania in the near-decade since former Governor Andrew Cuomo imposed a statewide hydrofracking ban and the State Legislature later affirmed it. His argument: We lose while Pennsylvania wins.
“The Southern Tier runs along the border of the State of Pennsylvania,” Borello stated. “The State of Pennsylvania has actually been hydrofracking for years. It has been an economic boon that the State of New York has not been able to participate in because of the ban.”
Borello continued, “We talk about negative health impacts. But it’s really been done literally feet from New York State, in some cases literally on the border of New York State, and yet we haven’t seen those health impacts… But yet, if there were any negative impacts, we would be suffering those impacts without any of the economic benefits of that fracking.”
All Senate Democrats supported Webb’s legislation. All opposing votes came from Republicans, including the three who once represented Tompkins County; Senators O’Mara, Oberacker, and Helming. Four from the GOP crossed-over to support Webb’s bill.
Back in 2015, former Governor Andrew Cuomo blocked hydrofracking by executive order. His action followed by several years the imposition of local bans by the Town of Enfield and others. The State Legislature strengthened Cuomo’s executive order by making it state law in 2020.
But in recent months, a Texas firm, Southern Tier CO2 to Clean Energy Solutions (Southern Tier Solutions) has sought to circumvent the New York ban, critics say. It proposes use of an experimental process that would replace treated water with “super-critical carbon dioxide.” This super-CO2 would be sent down pipes as a propellant to crack the shale and release the natural gas. Southern Tier Solutions has reportedly approached numerous New York landowners and offered them leases to permit the drilling.
On March 12th, when Republicans in the Assembly had placed Ithaca’s Anna Kelles on the hot seat, Dr. Kelles offered explanations—and often encouraged questions—that were wonkish and technical, much in line with the scientist that the Ithaca Assemblymember is. By contrast, the Senate’s questions of Lea Webb proved more generalized. They focused on foreclosed economic opportunities, and on whether the expanded ban served as merely a smokescreen to obscure Democrats’ less transparent objective: namely a Green New Deal ban on fossil fuels altogether.
Contemplative, or instead, maybe unsure of herself, Senator Webb—at least, when replayed from the Senate’s session archives—often hesitated to answer when Borello fielded questions at her during Wednesday’s debate. One pregnant pause lasted 41 seconds. The camera caught legislative clerks idle and impatient, rapping their fingers, awaiting her response.
“As I read the bill, essentially this is about extracting natural gas to be burned in power plants,” Borello questioned Webb. “You’re opposed to that as a part of this ban, is that correct? Are you opposed to using natural gas as a form of fuel in New York State?”
Lea Webb answered quickly in this instance, yet chose her words with economy. She dared not wander beyond the matter at hand.
“This bill only pertains to the proposal for CO2 hydrofracking,” Webb answered concisely.
Lea Webb was coy. But her downstate counterpart, Brad Hoylman-Sigal, was more up-front.
“Today, there’s been some evidence of climate change denialism,” Hoylman-Sigal, a Democrat from Manhattan, remarked. The Senator claimed a Department of Environmental Conservation study has estimated a potential 13-inch rise in his district’s sea levels by the 2030’s.
“Thirteen inches will mean that parts of my district will disappear,” Hoylman-Sigal warned with alarm. “So we must do everything in our power to combat the use of fossil fuels.” Hoylman-Sigal clearly saw Webb’s fracking ban as a means to achieve a much broader goal.
When Hoylman-Sigal heard “climate change denialism” that day, he probably saw the face of George Borello. Not only was the Chautauqua County Senator the only one to square off directly with Lea Webb in debate. He also freely countered Democrats’ health and environmental arguments with his own slights against the supposed saviors of the climate crisis: solar panels and wind farms.
Of turbines: “They’re killing off endangered species,” Borello alleged. “We’re actually allowing American Bald Eagles to be beheaded by the thousands across this country because we’re saving the planet with renewable energy.”
The Town of Arkwright, Borello alleged, was “sold a bill of goods.” Concerning leaders of that obscure, rural town near Fredonia, he said, “They said the streets are going to be paved with gold because of all the money they’re going to make off of wind turbines. And now they tell me that 24/7 it sounds like a jet that never lands over their house constantly.”
“They can’t sleep at night; people have had issues with sleeping,” Senator Borello said of the sad souls of Arkwright. “I’ve had farmers tell me that their chickens are not laying eggs anymore because of the infrasound.”
“It’s hypocritical to say we’re going to ban something that we know no idea about and not willing to admit there are problems with industrial turbines and solar panels,” Borello concluded.
Senator Borello’s arguments may have cut the widest contrarian path that day, but Tompkins County’s former State Senator, Tom O’Mara, weighed in as well. O’Mara’s contrasted the wide-eyed idealism of the environmental Left with what he saw as the hard, cold reality of the moment.
“Natural gas is going to be a part of our life, of our energy, of our manufacturing in this country for the rest of our life, like it or not,” O’Mara proclaimed.
“Farmers, landowners in the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania have obtained immense wealth from the recovery of natural gas,” the Big Flats Republican submitted. “Our farmers, our landowners in the Southern Tier (of New York) have been denied that time and time again. Now we have another opportunity here.”
Senator Borello would have one believe that the carbon dioxide injected down a gas well is the same as what makes your Pepsi fizz at the soda fountain. Senator Michelle Hinchey, a Webb ally, countered that fracking gas CO2 is a much different substance. Lea Webb described the “super-critical” form of the gas as “a volatile substance” and “corrosive.”
In the Assembly debate, Anna Kelles had cited an incident down south where the carbon dioxide had corroded a pipeline, leaked into the atmosphere, stalled emergency vehicles, and made people sick.
“In my opinion, there is no dollar sign or no amount of money that can cover the cost of long-term health care implications for these type of practices,” Webb said during final remarks.
Most acknowledge that the science Southern Tier Solutions relies upon remains untested at present. It may work. It may not. It may harm people and places. It may prove innocuous and do no damage. Those like Senator Webb and all of her fellow Senate Democrats would give caution the benefit of the doubt. Others, like Senator Borello, would grant the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) the opportunity to evaluate potential impacts before legislators arbitrarily outlaw the practice.
“This is not hydrofracking. This is a completely different process,” Republican Daniel Stec, a chemical engineer, told the Senate Wednesday. “This bill is about turning our nose up at natural gas, period. This bill is not about safety of the process or environmental impact,” Stec maintained. “To deny DEC the opportunity to review this and come up with a permitting process because we don’t like natural gas is arrogant and short-sighted.”
But Democrats have the Senate majority—indeed, a super-majority. For reasons that may vary Senator to Senator, that super-majority chooses to ban the innovative end-run around New York’s—and maybe also Enfield’s—fracking ban without giving DEC scientists a first look-see. Economic growth versus Green-favored environmentalism: It was the fracking argument’s divide a decade ago. It remains so today.
Fracking with carbon dioxide is an “extremely, extremely dangerous process that one has no business allowing in any part of New York,” Democrat Liz Kruger insisted.
“Fracking is not just an environmental nightmare, but it is a quality of life nightmare,” the Syracuse area’s Rachel May declared. May said she’s been to Pennsylvania. Senator May saw the fracking trucks clog bridges and transform communities that were “rural, bucolic, and quiet places” into something far different.
Tom O’Mara would see prosperity where Rachel May sees blight. “This is just one more block to doing things better because we want to get the perfect,” western Tompkins County’s former State Senator told allies and opponents. “Well,” he added, “this utopian approach is a train wreck coming down the track. It’s going to crush New York State. It’s going to crush communities across New York State economically; devastating.”
O’Mara faulted those across the aisle for practicing beyond their pay grade. “You’re all now the experts on whether this is feasible, safe or not,” he said. “This is just so short-sighted and so emblematic of the whole energy plan that this state thinks they have.”
###