The patterns documented on this site are not history. They are the current operating reality — maintained by specific policy choices, not natural forces. The tools to change them exist. The question is political, not technical.
The assessment roll in Elmira hasn't had a genuine citywide reassessment in decades. Thousands of properties carry values set long before current market conditions. The 2023 shift in the taxable full value figure was not a reassessment — it was the state updating its equalization rate formula, a statistical adjustment that changed how the state measures the roll, not the assessed value of any individual property. No one's assessment notice changed. See The Long Decline for the full picture of what actually happened and why.
Meanwhile, 39% of the city's assessed property value — including Elmira's two largest institutional landholders — generates zero property tax revenue. Those properties draw on city services the same as any taxable parcel: fire protection, roads, water, code enforcement. The PILOT page models what voluntary payments from those institutions could recover.
The City of Elmira houses the Chemung County Courthouse, county government offices, the county emergency services headquarters, and the region's primary healthcare infrastructure. It operates housing court, code enforcement, and the county's primary shelter and social services corridor. City taxpayers fund infrastructure that serves a much larger population than the city's 27,000 residents.
The county's property tax base grew by $785 million between 2021 and 2025. Nearly all of that growth happened outside city limits — in Big Flats, Horseheads, and Southport, where commercial and residential development has expanded steadily. The city's share of that growth is a fraction of the county total, yet city residents shoulder a disproportionate share of service costs relative to the tax base available to pay for them.
The Trends page breaks down where assessment growth has and hasn't happened across the county. The Strong Towns analysis shows that the commercial strips generating suburban growth produce less tax value per acre than the urban neighborhoods they draw customers away from — meaning the county's growth pattern is buying lower fiscal productivity at the same time the city's base stagnates.
The sales tax split — 66% county, 34% city — is not state law. It is a negotiated arrangement between the county and the city. Other New York cities in comparable situations have renegotiated those splits. Elmira has not initiated that process.
Legal under NY State law. Many upstate cities have done it. Syracuse, for example, last reassessed in the mid-1990s and has been attempting another one — the most recent effort was tabled by the Common Council in April 2025. Elmira is in a similar position: no mass reassessment in decades. The Elmira page models what reassessment would mean for the tax roll and who would see their bills change.
Arnot Health holds over $54M in exempt assessed value across its Elmira properties, paying $0 in property tax. Elmira College holds over $34M in exempt assessed value, also paying $0. Cornell committed $4M/year to Ithaca under a voluntary agreement. Elmira has no comparable arrangement with either institution. See the PILOT page for the full analysis. See the PILOT page for the full analysis.
The county-city split is governed by a local agreement, not fixed by state law. A city carrying disproportionate regional service costs has standing to request a more equitable arrangement. No formal renegotiation has been pursued.
Chemung County has a land bank — the Chemung County Property Development Corporation. Land banks can acquire tax-delinquent and abandoned properties, clear title, and return them to productive use — expanding the tax base and reducing blight. The tool exists; full-scale activation across the city's vacancy inventory has not happened.
Reassessment redistributes the tax burden. When a city hasn't reassessed in decades, properties that have appreciated — older homes in neighborhoods that have gone up in value, commercial properties that have been improved — are assessed below market. Their owners pay less than their share. Reassessment corrects this, but the correction feels like a tax increase to anyone whose assessment goes up, even if the rate falls proportionally. Long-time property owners vote in local elections at higher rates than renters or recent arrivals. Local elected officials respond to that pressure.
PILOTs require institutional willingness. Hospitals and colleges hold a legal exemption that cities cannot override. A PILOT can only happen if the institution agrees. In small cities, these institutions are often the largest employers and carry significant political weight. Pushing too hard risks damaging relationships or triggering rhetoric about reduced services or scaled-back expansion. The power asymmetry is real, and governments already under fiscal stress are risk-averse about confronting it.
The county has no incentive to renegotiate the sales tax split. The county legislature is controlled by suburban and rural districts where the current arrangement is advantageous. City residents are a minority of county voters. There is no mechanism forcing renegotiation absent sustained political pressure — which has not materialized.
The patterns documented on the 1940 redlining map and traced through the Long Decline didn't produce the current situation on their own. They created conditions — concentrated poverty, a depleted tax base, weakened political power for the communities most affected — that make changing current arrangements harder. The historical injury and the present policy failure are connected, not separate.
The assessment data, the poverty rates, the exemption figures, the sales tax splits — these are measurements. They document what is happening. They don't make the political choices that would change it.
Other cities have pushed harder on these tools. Cornell signed a voluntary MOU committing $4 million annually to Ithaca — not technically a PILOT, but the product of sustained pressure that Elmira has not attempted with its own large institutions. Cities have renegotiated county arrangements when they've built the political conditions to do it. The conditions in those cities were not obviously more favorable than in Elmira. The difference was political organization and sustained pressure, not economic precondition.
The goal of this site is to make the numbers visible — to show what the assessment roll actually looks like, where the exemptions fall, how the tax base has and hasn't grown, who is and isn't paying. Visible numbers create the conditions for accountability. They don't substitute for it.
Sources: NYS ORPTS assessment rolls via data.ny.gov (dataset 7vem-aaz7); poverty rate, U.S. Census ACS 2024 5-year estimate; Cornell–Ithaca MOU, Cornell Chronicle, Oct 2023; Syracuse reassessment tabled April 2025, Spectrum News / WAER. Full PILOT comparables and citations on the PILOT page.