Featured analysis Property tax
Elmira's property-tax system asks more of the homes worth least.
Homes selling for less than $50,000 carry about twice the property tax per dollar of market value as homes selling for $150,000 or more.
Cheaper homes carry more of the tax burden
Median assessed value as a share of sale price
$47,000Median single-family assessment, unchanged from 2021 through 2025
44 of 2,354Residential transfers that received any assessment update
38.9%Share of Elmira's assessed value outside the taxable roll
About the project
What This Site Is About
Only New York City taxes property at a higher rate than Elmira, according to the State Comptroller's 2025 figures.¹ Elmira also has one of the highest poverty rates in the Southern Tier (30.2%, ACS 2024 5-year).² Those two facts are connected. Decades of policy choices have hollowed out the revenue base that city services depend on. Assessments froze, exemptions went unchallenged, and the city's share of the countywide sales tax shrank. The people left holding the bill are the ones with the least ability to pay it.
Open Elmira follows the money on both sides of that story. It uses the public assessment record, the State Comptroller's line-item budget filings for the city and Chemung County, audited financial reports, and real sales transactions to document what is happening, and to show that the tools to change it exist. Reassessment, PILOT agreements, and a renegotiated county sales-tax split are not radical ideas; they are standard policy options comparable places have used. The barrier is not legal or technical. It is political.
What the data shows
Key findings
City & County
The City–County Relationship
The sales-tax split and the shared-services dispute (Res. 15-114). Chemung County shared 37.5% of its sales-tax pool with municipalities every year through 2014. It now shares about 25%. That is roughly $22.8M Elmira has not collected since 2015.
Economic development
The Chemung County IDA
49 tax-abatement deals cover $105M of property that pays almost no property tax — a net $3.2M/yr, 53% of it borne by school districts that never get a vote. Every deal, sourced.
City finances
City Budget Explorer
Interactive: where Elmira's money comes from and goes, 1995–2025. Drill into any category. The fund-balance cushion nearly vanished in 2024.
Open the data
Explore the data
Interactive tools built from public records
Zoning, Explained
On 85% of Elmira's 8,286 residentially-zoned lots, the code allows exactly one home and nothing more. Look up any address to see what yours allows, and which rule sets the limit.
Look up your lot →The Fair-Share Map
Every City of Elmira residential parcel, mapped by whether it's assessed at a higher or lower share of its market value than its neighbors.
Open the Fair-Share Map →The Fiscal Decoder
Seven Strong Towns indicators scored from Elmira's audited statements. Three red, three yellow — in FY2024 the city held 28¢ in financial assets for every $1 it owed.
Open the decoder →The Value of an Acre
A downtown Elmira block puts $1M+ on each acre; the Wegmans plaza puts $282K, a parking lot $14K. Compact land earns more — and costs less street and pipe to serve.
Explore value per acre →Policy options
What can change—and who can change it?
01
Who the Assessment Freeze Protects
Elmira's assessment freeze systematically overtaxes low-value homes while shielding expensive ones. What a citywide reassessment would actually change, and for whom.
See the reassessment analysis →02
PILOT Analysis
$340M of Elmira's assessed value is permanently exempt. What voluntary payments from hospitals and colleges could recover, and how other cities have done it.
Examine the PILOT option →03
Why It Matters
The freeze is still frozen. The exemptions still exempt. What the tools are, why they're not being used, and who benefits from the status quo.
See why these patterns persist →Open-data principle
Read the records behind the analysis
NYS ORPTS assessment rolls, State Comptroller budget filings, audited financial reports, public meeting records, source code, and methodology are collected in one catalogue.
¹ $18.49 per $1,000 of full value (NYS Office of the State Comptroller, 2025 local government tax tables; the workbook is served here). That is the city levy alone. Adding Chemung County's levy brings it to about $24.86 per $1,000, before the school district's levy. The ranking covers only cities that filed a rate. The City of Ithaca did not file one for 2025, so it is unranked and cannot be compared here. Earlier rankings put Elmira 9th in 2009–13 (NYS Financial Restructuring Board, 2016) and 8th by effective rate in 2020 (Empire Center).
² Poverty rate: U.S. Census, ACS 2024 5-year estimate (Elmira city 30.2% vs. ~14% statewide).