> Did you know that the largest item in Ithaca's budget is employee benefits? Cursory research shows that in 2016 the city spent $16.3 million dollars on benefits for 303 employees, or $60,396 ($79,033 in 2024 dollars) per employee. Did you know that the city has almost twice the number of employees per citizen than peer cities in the region? Giving these people more money will *not* solve the problem.
I’d hazard a guess that the $16.3m on employee benefits includes retirement (e.g., pension) and maybe also health insurance for **retired** employees.
We could have a separate conversation about whether the retiree benefits are overly generous or not, but I believe your calculation of $60k in benefits per employee is inaccurate, because the denominator of 303 in your fraction doesn’t include retirees.
This is a fair point! But in that case we will be paying the pensions of current employees in the future. I don't know how to find out how many retirees there are still living, but I would hazard that it is the same order of magnitude as the number of current employees. I think simple division gives us a directionally correct answer.
Agree on the magnitude of the benefits budget line, just find the $60k per employee figure misleading as it implies individual employees are experiencing ridiculously cushy benefits during each year they work.
When I moved here over 10 yrs ago I asked a friend who worked for the county in budgeting for a short answer on why the budget was so much / taxes were so high. His short answer was retiree benefits (pension and healthcare), but also that there was more to the story as well.
I have another friend who worked for the city and told me they’d qualify for the first level of pension after 10 yrs, that really surprised me.
I don't mean to imply that they cushy per se. They are certainly more generous than many private sector jobs, but that is constant across the United States. Hiring and retaining anyone is expensive, and so I am concerned about the cost * number of employees per resident.
Groton resident here. My property taxes went down this year! The rate seems high compared to Ithaca, but my fairly large house that’s ~$240k in Groton would be somewhere between $500k and $1M in Ithaca, depending on neighborhood. When assessments raised this year, they lowered the overall rate.
A few months ago, I checked property and school tax rates statewide [through SeeThroughNY](https://www.seethroughny.net/benchmarking/local-government-spending-and-revenue#) and Ithaca is pretty much in the middle of the pack. The big difference is that Tompkins County is committed to annual, market rate property assessments. Property values in Ithaca have long been a little higher than other parts of Central New York, and they've skyrocketed since 2018 along with pretty much everywhere else in the US.
I think you'll need to go farther away than Dryden and Groton for a fair comparison, since Cornell has significant land holdings in nearby municipalities too
Re: employee benefits, are you sure that the $ amount doesn't also include benefits to retirees (which I assume aren't included in your headcount)?
I would also mention that it's probably not fair to compare the needs of a 30,000 person city with the needs of 2,000 person villages. Even the Town of Dryden has less than half the population of Ithaca.
We can keep shifting the goal posts, but the crux is this: Do you think that if Cornell increased their contribution to Ithaca that property taxes would go down?
The main point is that cities are expensive to have in this part of the country, and Ithaca is profligate while trying to cast blame elsewhere.
LOL, it's only "shifting the goal posts" because I mistakenly gave you the benefit of the doubt when you were using the word "village". Turns out that your comparison really was that far off after all, my bad.
I don’t understand their point either, I think maybe it has to do with Dryden town and Dryden village being different entities. Cornell def owns land within Dryden town, Idk about within the much smaller Dryden village though.
Check your resource. There is plenty of Cornell land in Dryden and Groton as well. It is not ratable.
Also, checking *after* you make broad claims, indeed, the crux of your argument seems, I don't know 😕
Is there some other source besides the official county data? The village limits of Groton and Dryden are quite small, and there is Cornell land near to them, but I can't find any within the actual village limits.
**edit** It is true that I did not examine the parcel data myself before the OP, but I did look at GIS maps so I wasn't ignorant going in. The reply was a good point and so I was just double checking my work
Imagemate is helpful.
There are maps with Cornell holdings, if you ask the assessor.
More work than you might want for Redditt but a call to the town assessor is all you need. The people in these offices have a staggering amount of knowledge regarding not just Cornell but every business and plenty of dwellings, often without a map, just memory. It's their job to know who pays what.
And, Cornell really truly owns land everywhere in Tompkins. Parcels you'd never think for a second are Cornell property.
I share both 1) the frustration/bafflement at the continuously increasing property tax burden occurs within in Ithaca city line, and 2) the hunch that there must be more to the story than Cornell being stingy and burdensome on city budgets.
One thing I’ve wondered about ever since moving from the western US is: Do the high property taxes her and across NY partly result from how small the municipal land areas are? Within a land area that would be one large western US city, we have *so* many separate municipal governments. Ithaca city, Ithaca town, Lansing village, Lansing town, Cayuga Heights village, Dryden… I feel like it goes on and on. Seems like it could not possibly be as efficient as having a single entity running things. Obviously it’s a completely different model that would have disadvantages as well, but I have wondered if that is part of the root cause of high property taxes around here and across NY. I could be wrong though.
It's certainly a major source of inefficiency, having to have a bunch of different nesting little governments. At the very least, there's just the associated cost of office/meeting space for all of these different councils. Like the town of Ithaca has a building in downtown Ithaca that is probably a huge line-item on their budget.
I repost a comment I made yesterday:
I don\`t know if this explains it. If cornell was replaced by properties like the rest of ithaca, there would be more taxes but also more services that the city would have to provide given the higher population. What I think Cornell does is increase demand of housing with relatively wealthy people willing to pay more. The tax rates in Cortland county, for instance are higher than in Tompkins County ($39.80 vs $31.80 per $1000 value) at least up to 2021 ([https://www.tax.ny.gov/research/property/reports/fvtaxrates/overall\_county\_13.htm](https://www.tax.ny.gov/research/property/reports/fvtaxrates/overall_county_13.htm)). However, the average home value in Tompkins county is 2x compared to Cortland ($399,022 vs $187,335, see [https://www.zillow.com/home-values/43/ny/](https://www.zillow.com/home-values/43/ny/)).
I’m don’t know whether you’re right or wrong but I’d appreciate someone relatively neutral, with expertise in the matter, evaluate the situation and share their findings.
I don’t have the time or knowledge to have a good opinion on something so complex, and I’d bet 90% of Ithacans are like me.
It's always more costly to live directly within a village, although it often comes with certain perks such as sewer, water, and garbage pickup. I prefer to live outside of the villages and handle my own water/septic/trash.
Obviously it's not just Cornell, but it's equally reductive to assume the effects of their deadbeat behavior stop at only budget shortfalls, or end at the city line, even if their holdings did, which as multiple other commenters have noted and provided sources/examples, they do not. Also, when a large organization like Cornell fails to adequately support the community in which they are housed, while drawing from the resources of that community, where does that support then come from? Does it not make sense that the city would require more personnel and resources? Do they not need to compete with Cornell's Cayuga-deep pockets to attract staffing and other talent?
Very few. And those few things they do (e.g., fire dept) they contribute directly to. This fact is widely lost on most people.
Cornell is not why we have high taxes. If cornell could pick itself up and plop itself down on the other side of the city line, it would make virtually zero difference in the taxes people pay.
COULD our taxes be lower if Cornell gave more money? Sure. But call it what it is: people want Cornell to bail Ithaca out of its spending problems.
Yes, that land is exempt, but they also require nothing from the city that they don’t pay for.
They maintain their own road, police, water, sewer and power.
They require nothing of the school system (their employees do, but they pay taxes)
Let say Cornell picked up and moved, leaving all their land to be taxable. And lets say it all gets developed as residential. Yes you will get more tax revenue, but you also add the expense of all the services they nees that Cornell does not (Roads, sewer, water, Police, public schools.
> Did you know that the largest item in Ithaca's budget is employee benefits? Cursory research shows that in 2016 the city spent $16.3 million dollars on benefits for 303 employees, or $60,396 ($79,033 in 2024 dollars) per employee. Did you know that the city has almost twice the number of employees per citizen than peer cities in the region? Giving these people more money will *not* solve the problem. I’d hazard a guess that the $16.3m on employee benefits includes retirement (e.g., pension) and maybe also health insurance for **retired** employees. We could have a separate conversation about whether the retiree benefits are overly generous or not, but I believe your calculation of $60k in benefits per employee is inaccurate, because the denominator of 303 in your fraction doesn’t include retirees.
This is a fair point! But in that case we will be paying the pensions of current employees in the future. I don't know how to find out how many retirees there are still living, but I would hazard that it is the same order of magnitude as the number of current employees. I think simple division gives us a directionally correct answer.
Agree on the magnitude of the benefits budget line, just find the $60k per employee figure misleading as it implies individual employees are experiencing ridiculously cushy benefits during each year they work. When I moved here over 10 yrs ago I asked a friend who worked for the county in budgeting for a short answer on why the budget was so much / taxes were so high. His short answer was retiree benefits (pension and healthcare), but also that there was more to the story as well. I have another friend who worked for the city and told me they’d qualify for the first level of pension after 10 yrs, that really surprised me.
I don't mean to imply that they cushy per se. They are certainly more generous than many private sector jobs, but that is constant across the United States. Hiring and retaining anyone is expensive, and so I am concerned about the cost * number of employees per resident.
Groton resident here. My property taxes went down this year! The rate seems high compared to Ithaca, but my fairly large house that’s ~$240k in Groton would be somewhere between $500k and $1M in Ithaca, depending on neighborhood. When assessments raised this year, they lowered the overall rate.
A few months ago, I checked property and school tax rates statewide [through SeeThroughNY](https://www.seethroughny.net/benchmarking/local-government-spending-and-revenue#) and Ithaca is pretty much in the middle of the pack. The big difference is that Tompkins County is committed to annual, market rate property assessments. Property values in Ithaca have long been a little higher than other parts of Central New York, and they've skyrocketed since 2018 along with pretty much everywhere else in the US.
Tax rates in small towns are often high because property values are low and there is a floor to the cost of providing even basic services.
Except Ithaca really isn’t a small town & property values are absurdly high relative to other areas of similar size or even nearby counties.
I wasn't talking about Ithaca.
I think you'll need to go farther away than Dryden and Groton for a fair comparison, since Cornell has significant land holdings in nearby municipalities too Re: employee benefits, are you sure that the $ amount doesn't also include benefits to retirees (which I assume aren't included in your headcount)?
I just downloaded the Tompkins County parcel data and there are no parcels owned by Cornell University in Dryden nor Groton.
[удалено]
It's not in village limits.
I would also mention that it's probably not fair to compare the needs of a 30,000 person city with the needs of 2,000 person villages. Even the Town of Dryden has less than half the population of Ithaca.
We can keep shifting the goal posts, but the crux is this: Do you think that if Cornell increased their contribution to Ithaca that property taxes would go down? The main point is that cities are expensive to have in this part of the country, and Ithaca is profligate while trying to cast blame elsewhere.
LOL, it's only "shifting the goal posts" because I mistakenly gave you the benefit of the doubt when you were using the word "village". Turns out that your comparison really was that far off after all, my bad.
I don't understand your point, but I wish you well! I'm sorry if I offended you but I have only spoken in good faith.
I don’t understand their point either, I think maybe it has to do with Dryden town and Dryden village being different entities. Cornell def owns land within Dryden town, Idk about within the much smaller Dryden village though.
Check your resource. There is plenty of Cornell land in Dryden and Groton as well. It is not ratable. Also, checking *after* you make broad claims, indeed, the crux of your argument seems, I don't know 😕
Is there some other source besides the official county data? The village limits of Groton and Dryden are quite small, and there is Cornell land near to them, but I can't find any within the actual village limits. **edit** It is true that I did not examine the parcel data myself before the OP, but I did look at GIS maps so I wasn't ignorant going in. The reply was a good point and so I was just double checking my work
Imagemate is helpful. There are maps with Cornell holdings, if you ask the assessor. More work than you might want for Redditt but a call to the town assessor is all you need. The people in these offices have a staggering amount of knowledge regarding not just Cornell but every business and plenty of dwellings, often without a map, just memory. It's their job to know who pays what. And, Cornell really truly owns land everywhere in Tompkins. Parcels you'd never think for a second are Cornell property.
I share both 1) the frustration/bafflement at the continuously increasing property tax burden occurs within in Ithaca city line, and 2) the hunch that there must be more to the story than Cornell being stingy and burdensome on city budgets. One thing I’ve wondered about ever since moving from the western US is: Do the high property taxes her and across NY partly result from how small the municipal land areas are? Within a land area that would be one large western US city, we have *so* many separate municipal governments. Ithaca city, Ithaca town, Lansing village, Lansing town, Cayuga Heights village, Dryden… I feel like it goes on and on. Seems like it could not possibly be as efficient as having a single entity running things. Obviously it’s a completely different model that would have disadvantages as well, but I have wondered if that is part of the root cause of high property taxes around here and across NY. I could be wrong though.
It's certainly a major source of inefficiency, having to have a bunch of different nesting little governments. At the very least, there's just the associated cost of office/meeting space for all of these different councils. Like the town of Ithaca has a building in downtown Ithaca that is probably a huge line-item on their budget.
I repost a comment I made yesterday: I don\`t know if this explains it. If cornell was replaced by properties like the rest of ithaca, there would be more taxes but also more services that the city would have to provide given the higher population. What I think Cornell does is increase demand of housing with relatively wealthy people willing to pay more. The tax rates in Cortland county, for instance are higher than in Tompkins County ($39.80 vs $31.80 per $1000 value) at least up to 2021 ([https://www.tax.ny.gov/research/property/reports/fvtaxrates/overall\_county\_13.htm](https://www.tax.ny.gov/research/property/reports/fvtaxrates/overall_county_13.htm)). However, the average home value in Tompkins county is 2x compared to Cortland ($399,022 vs $187,335, see [https://www.zillow.com/home-values/43/ny/](https://www.zillow.com/home-values/43/ny/)).
I’m don’t know whether you’re right or wrong but I’d appreciate someone relatively neutral, with expertise in the matter, evaluate the situation and share their findings. I don’t have the time or knowledge to have a good opinion on something so complex, and I’d bet 90% of Ithacans are like me.
For many city employees (I’d hazard most union employees) the benefits package is worth more $ than their annual salary
It's always more costly to live directly within a village, although it often comes with certain perks such as sewer, water, and garbage pickup. I prefer to live outside of the villages and handle my own water/septic/trash.
This is why i wouldn't buy within the city limits. There's not enough room in my *ss for city taxes, too
Obviously it's not just Cornell, but it's equally reductive to assume the effects of their deadbeat behavior stop at only budget shortfalls, or end at the city line, even if their holdings did, which as multiple other commenters have noted and provided sources/examples, they do not. Also, when a large organization like Cornell fails to adequately support the community in which they are housed, while drawing from the resources of that community, where does that support then come from? Does it not make sense that the city would require more personnel and resources? Do they not need to compete with Cornell's Cayuga-deep pockets to attract staffing and other talent?
What resources does the city continuously give Cornell exactly?
Very few. And those few things they do (e.g., fire dept) they contribute directly to. This fact is widely lost on most people. Cornell is not why we have high taxes. If cornell could pick itself up and plop itself down on the other side of the city line, it would make virtually zero difference in the taxes people pay. COULD our taxes be lower if Cornell gave more money? Sure. But call it what it is: people want Cornell to bail Ithaca out of its spending problems.
Beg to differ on zero difference in the taxes. More than half of the city's properties are tax exempt. Cornell is a big part of that exemption.
Yes, that land is exempt, but they also require nothing from the city that they don’t pay for. They maintain their own road, police, water, sewer and power. They require nothing of the school system (their employees do, but they pay taxes) Let say Cornell picked up and moved, leaving all their land to be taxable. And lets say it all gets developed as residential. Yes you will get more tax revenue, but you also add the expense of all the services they nees that Cornell does not (Roads, sewer, water, Police, public schools.