Stop punishing the people who live here
Elmira has lost nearly half its population from its peak in the 1950s. As those people left, and our industry with them, the tax base that our city relied on, failed to adapt. The burden shifted onto fewer people, driving up tax rates. An Elmira homeowner pays about 4% of their home’s market value in property tax every year — $39.64 per $1,000 of full value, city and county and school combined. The city line alone, at $18.49 per $1,000 of full value, is the second-highest of New York’s 61 cities.
That is not the only problem. A shrinking share of the county’s sales tax, a roll where nearly 40% of the value pays nothing, and a balance sheet that is millions underwater. Here are the numbers.
County sales tax
Of the 8% we pay at the register, the county collects half, then allocates a portion back to the city and the other municipalities within Chemung. In 2014, the city of Elmira took 12.33% of the countywide pool. But in 2024, it only received 8.167%. The pool grew. Our share of it shrank. Since 2015, that adds up to tens of millions we did not collect.
The trade was supposed to bring shared services, health insurance, and county assistance. Other counties in the state have been able to make it work. The city is paying for many of those things again, but the sales tax share never came back. Our expenses are the highest in our history and our share of the county’s collections is the lowest.
What I’ll do
- Reopen the sales tax allocation with the County.
- Competitively bid the service contracts.
- Cut expenses where we can.
Exempt properties
Over $350 million of property value,38.9% of the roll, is exempt and does not pay into city taxes. Every third building you drive past isn’t carrying its share.
- Elmira College holds $34.8 million of assessed value across 58 city parcels. It pays the city $5,000 a year, under a 1994 student-assessment agreement priced at $5.00 per full-time resident student with a $5,000 floor. The floor holds, because the formula now produces less than the floor. That payment is 0.22% of the combined tax bill on a median Elmira home.
- Arnot Health shelters roughly $40 million and pays a little over $17,000 a year through a PILOT.
- The Chemung County IDA shelters over $100 million of assessed value across the city through agreements and ownership — about $3.2 million a year in taxes not collected.
The IDA’s own standard schedule is a 50% abatement over 10 years for commercial and 15 for manufacturing. The exceptions run well past it: a 20-year conversion abatement on the Booth School, a $1-a-year lease mechanism at Anchor Glass.
What I’ll do
- Renegotiate the Elmira College agreement. It’s a 1994 contract with a floor that hasn’t moved in thirty years while the city’s costs tripled.
- Publish an annual exemption report. Every exempt parcel, its assessed value, what it pays, and the estimated cost of the services it receives.
- Oppose any new city abatement that exceeds the IDA’s own standard schedule.
- Demand a formal city role at the IDA table on any deal involving city parcels.
Let’s start building again
Tearing a building down is half the job. The other half is what goes back on the lot.
A common saying in my family is that Elmira’s leadership is "Stuck in 1972". Many of the decisions, or lack thereof, do not address the root problems that we face, and they act like they are living in a pre-Agnes city. A majority of our businesses and store fronts from that time are gone, bulldozed and replaced with a patch of grass we call a park. A vacant lot pays nothing in tax and costs the city to mow and maintain. In Elmira the median vacant parcel carries about $21,000 of assessed value per acre. A single-family home: $292,000 per acre. Downtown compact rows: $1.12 million per acre.
And when someone does want to build, the code frequently says no. Of the city’s 8,000+ residentially-zoned lots, 85% permit exactly one home. The last real mixed-use building we put up — 100 E. Water Street, commercial below and apartments above — went in nearly a decade ago and became the anchor everything else downtown grew around. Our historic downtown is made of buildings like that. Our current code would not let most of them be built.
Then there’s First Baptist. It burned in February 2025. The city declared it a total loss and demolished it days later for public safety. A year and a half on, the rubble is still sitting there next to Wisner Park, in the middle of the district we tell people is coming back, and no cleanup plan has been published.
What I’ll do
- A demolition-to-disposition rule. No city-funded demolition without a written plan and a date for what happens to the lot: sale, side-lot transfer to the neighbor, or land bank.
- Lien and pursue cost recovery on every privately-owned building the city has to take down — and publish the recovery rate annually.
- A shot clock on permits and site plan review.
Blight is public safety
You cannot arrest your way out of an empty block.
Elmira officers clear nearly every homicide they’re handed — better than almost any department in the country.
The hand tied behind their back is a city that hands them block after block of vacant and burned-out structures and calls it a police matter when homeless break-in. More than half the arrests our officers make are for low-level offenses, a majority being trespassing. You cannot arrest your way out of an empty block. A burned-out house next door doesn’t get solved by a patrol car — it gets solved by code enforcement, a lien, a demolition, and something built back on the lot.
What I’ll do
- Treat code enforcement as a public safety function and staff it that way — the vacant structure is the crime scene nobody is assigned to.
- Back the department in public, and help them get the job done correctly.
Have a question about any of this, or an issue I haven't addressed? Email booth4mayor@gmail.com