Tompkins County 2009 Budget Proposed

The 2009 Tentative County budget meets the Legislature's goal of a tax levy increase of no more than 3 percent. 

Steve Whicher and Norma Jayne, executive assistant to the county administrator, spoke at a press conference at Ithaca College's Roy H. Park School for Communications on September 29. They spoke for a little over an hour to a group of News Reporting and Writing students, using the same presentation and power point that was given at the Tompkins County Public Library. 

Whicher and Jayne described the tentative tax levy increase of 2.77 percent from last year. This is under the goal of a no more than 3 percent increase from last year's tax levy increase created by the Legislature. A tax levy is the total amount of property tax revenue collected to balance the budget. 

Expenditures in the budget are as follows: 

• $19.1 million for mandated services
• $45.1 million for non-mandated services 
• $1.1 million for non-capital over target requests
• $700,000 for over target requests
  

Tompkins County revenue comes from the following sources: 

• $29 million from sales tax
• $36.8 million from property tax
• $4 million from other sources

The tax rate in Tompkins County this year is undergoing some changes as well. This is because the tax rate, or the amount of tax property owners pay per thousand dollars assessed value, has decreased significantly. The tax rate will drop by 13.7 percent from 2008. 

In the tentative budget for 2009 there is $250,000 budgeted for overcrowding in the prisons. "Spending money on a jail will invite more people to go to the jails, " Whicher said. He explained that the legislature has a "if you build it, they will come"  mentality about prisons and would rather spend the money elsewhere. There are no immediate plans to remedy jail-house crowding in the future. However, if conditions persist, the county is considering working with Cortland County to build a joint prison specifically for people who have been sentenced to a crime, Whicher said. 

Currently there are 80-84 inmates in the county's jail. The total capacity is 74. The county does not believe that the cost of expansion or other means of rectifying the situation are beneficial due to the cost. So, for the time being, the county will continue to bus its prisoners elsewhere unless the situation drastically changes. 

The budget vote will take place during the third week of November. While the tentative budget is under the 3 percent tax levy increase proposed by the County Legislature, unforeseen costs and the loss of state aid could cause this number to increase.