ITHACA, N.Y. — Tompkins County property owners should expect to see an eyebrow-raising jump in the assessed value of their property this year.
The Tompkins County Assessment Department published in its annual county-wide assessment report that property value in Tompkins County, on average, increased by 19.8%.
It is a steep rise that is calculated from the increasing sale prices of property in Tompkins County.
“The real estate market within Tompkins County has probably been the strongest that it has ever been,” Jay Franklin, the Tompkins County Director of Assessment wrote in the office’s annual report.
Residential property sale prices in the county rose to an average of $366,535 in 2023 from $342,374 in 2022, according to the assessment department. That’s an increase of about 7%.
In 2020, the average sale price of a residential property in Tompkins County was $284,590, marking about a 28.8% increase in average sale price between 2023 and 2020.
The village of Cayuga Heights saw the highest increase in dollar value in the county’s preliminary assessment. On average, properties in Cayuga Heights rose by $113,300, or 25.6%.
Properties in the city of Ithaca increased by 14.8% on average, or $44,743.
The village of Groton stands to have the lowest increase in assessed property value of the municipalities in Tompkins County. On average, properties increased in value by 11.2%, or $17,310.
The assessment office will start to mail out annual assessment disclosure notices on Friday, starting with the town of Ulysses. Between Feb. 23 and March 22, the property owners in each of the municipalities in Tompkins County will receive a preliminary assessment and an estimate of what their tax payments will be.
The final date for all property owners to appeal their assessments with the Tompkins County Department of Assessment is April 12.
However, with this year’s annual assessment disclosures, Franklin is trying to emphasize another message: the county assessment office doesn’t decide a property’s tax bill.
It’s a misconception that Franklin told The Ithaca Voice his office has long struggled to reverse.
“Everywhere I go, everybody sees me, ‘Look, there’s Jay. He raised our taxes,’” Franklin said.
Property taxes are determined by how much a taxing jurisdiction, such as a municipality or a school district, needs to raise through taxes and what its tax base is. The amount of money that a taxing jurisdiction seeks to raise through property taxes is known as the tax levy, and the tax base is the total assessed value of taxable property.
A tax rate is calculated by dividing a tax levy by the tax base. That value can then be multiplied by 1,000 to find the tax rate per $1,000 of taxable assessed value.
“The Department of Assessment is in no way responsible for the spending decisions made by the elected officials,” Franklin wrote in the assessment office’s annual report.
A report on tax levy changes from the assessment department shows that some taxing jurisdictions have had large tax levy increases in recent years.
For instance, the Town of Lansing’s 2024 tax levy is nearly $3.4 million. That’s a 15.6% year-over-year increase from 2023, after a 21.8% increase from 2022, according to the Department of Assessment.
The average tax levy increase between 2023 and 2024 for municipalities in Tompkins County, excluding the county itself, was 5.4%.
The growth in the Town of Lansing’s tax levy parallels the growth in the town’s tax base and budget. The Town of Lansing’s budget rose from about $7.9 million in 2022 to over $10 million in 2024.
The Town of Lansing’s tax base increased by 7.9% from 2022 to 2023, or from $1,643,287,382 to $1,772,550,444, according to the Tompkins County Department of Assessment.
Town of Lansing Supervisor Ruth Groff said the need to raise the tax levy in Lansing has stemmed from the town’s growing population and a post-pandemic economy in which the cost of providing services has grown, such as the town’s highway department.
“Basically, the bottom line is that to continue to provide the quality services that people in Lansing are used to, we had no choice but to increase the taxes,” Groff said.
How those decisions get made is a debate that Franklin said he plays no part in.
“We’re just trying to value property,” Franklin said.
After receiving your preliminary assessment, call 607-274-5516 to schedule an appointment for a discussion with an appraiser from the Tompkins County Department of Assessment
Here are some key dates to know:
| Municipality | Date of Mailing | Start of Appointments | End of Appointments | Last Day to Submit Review |
| Caroline | 03/22/2024 | 04/01/2024 | 04/12/2024 | 04/12/2024 |
| City of Ithaca | 03/22/2024 | 04/01/2024 | 04/12/2024 | 04/12/2024 |
| Danby | 03/15/2024 | 03/25/2024 | 04/05/2024 | 04/12/2024 |
| Dryden | 02/23/2024 | 03/04/2024 | 03/15/2024 | 04/12/2024 |
| Enfield | 03/01/2024 | 03/11/2024 | 03/22/2024 | 04/12/2024 |
| Groton | 03/08/2024 | 03/18/2024 | 03/29/2024 | 04/12/2024 |
| Town of Ithaca | 03/15/2024 | 03/25/2024 | 04/05/2024 | 04/12/2024 |
| Lansing | 03/08/2024 | 03/18/2024 | 03/29/2024 | 04/12/2024 |
| Newfield | 03/01/2024 | 03/11/2024 | 03/22/2024 | 04/12/2024 |
| Ulysses | 02/23/2024 | 03/04/2024 | 03/15/2024 | 04/12/2024 |
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The post Tompkins County properties experience nearly 20% average value increase after reassessment appeared first on The Ithaca Voice.