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 since 1995 — 31 years. That is the state's own record: New York's Department of Taxation and Finance publishes the most recent reassessment by municipality, and its 2009 study of assessment options for Chemung County records the City of Elmira (SWIS 70400) at a “Latest Reassessment” of 1995 — in a county where most towns now reassess annually. 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 holds the Chemung County Courthouse, the county government offices, the county emergency services headquarters, and the region's main hospitals. It runs housing court and code enforcement. It holds the county's main shelter and social services corridor. City taxpayers pay for all of it, and it serves far more people than the city's 27,000 residents.
The county's property tax base grew by $782 million between 2021 and 2025. Nearly all of that growth landed outside city limits, in Big Flats, Horseheads and Southport, where building has been steady. Only a small slice of it is the city's. Yet the city carries an outsized share of the service costs, against a tax base that has not grown to match.
The Trends page breaks down where assessment growth has and hasn't happened across the county. The Tax Value per Acre analysis shows something sharper. The commercial strips driving that suburban growth return less tax value per acre than the city neighborhoods they pull customers away from. So the county is trading productive land for less productive land, while the city's base sits still.
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 almost exactly the same position: its own last mass reassessment was 1995. When the state studied the question in 2009 it priced a full city revaluation at $341,000 gross — $224,000 net of state aid, at $35 a parcel — and noted the city would need to amend its charter to adopt a formal assessment cycle. Those are 2009 dollars for 9,745 parcels; the real figure today would be higher. The Reassessment 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, on which it pays no property tax and a PILOT of $17,357 a year — about 0.5% of what those holdings would be billed. Elmira College holds $34.8M — the property value of about 741 typical Elmira homes — and pays the city $5,000 a year, unchanged since 1994, roughly what one and a half of those homes pay in combined property taxes. If the college paid 1% of the value of its property each year, that would be $348,000. See the PILOT page for the full breakdown.
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.
The city-owned Elmira Water Board runs a steady surplus and holds ~$7.9M in unrestricted reserves, yet has paid the city nothing since 2002. The city charter (§ 166-o) lets the Council request a fair return, and the state recommended exactly that in 2016 — Jamestown and Albany already collect $500K–$750K a year from theirs. See The Water Board.
Reassessment moves the tax burden around. When a city has not reassessed in decades, the properties that gained value end up assessed below market. That means older homes in neighborhoods that went up, and commercial buildings that were improved. Their owners pay less than their share. Reassessment fixes that. But the fix feels like a tax increase to anyone whose assessment rises, even when the rate falls to match. And long-time property owners vote in local elections more than renters or recent arrivals do. Elected officials feel that pressure.
A PILOT only happens if the institution says yes. Hospitals and colleges hold a legal exemption no city can override. In a small city they are often the largest employers, and they carry real political weight. Push too hard and you risk the relationship, or you invite talk of cut services and cancelled expansion. The imbalance of power is real. A government already under fiscal stress does not want to test it.
The county has no reason to reopen the sales tax split. Suburban and rural districts control the county legislature, and the current deal suits them. City residents are a minority of county voters. Nothing forces a renegotiation. Only sustained political pressure would, and that has not appeared.
The patterns on the 1940 redlining map, traced through the Long Decline, did not create today's situation by themselves. What they created were the conditions: concentrated poverty, a depleted tax base, and less political power for the communities hit hardest. Those conditions make the present arrangements harder to change. The old injury and the current policy failure are one story, not two.
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.