The Common Council delayed a formal vote on its 2025 budget on Wednesday. All but one of the 14 speakers who commented on the budget during the public hearing and public comment sections of the meeting expressed concerns over the impact of the tax rate increase on homeowners.
Common Council passed a tax levy override, tabled a discussion on voter registration for tenants and unanimously supported an amendment to send funding to help staff the Ithaca Area Wastewater Treatment Plant at their Sept. 4 meeting.
The Make Cornell Pay Coalition addressed the Ithaca Common Council at the council’s Wednesday, Aug. 2 meeting to emphasize the need for more transparency throughout negotiations between the City of Ithaca and Cornell.
In a Monday night event immediately preceding former Walker’s talk at Cornell, Prof. Lee Adler, labor relations, dissected how — in just eight years — one leader’s tenure turned a once hotbed for union activism into a state synonymous with organized labor’s most high-profile, decisive defeats.
Nearly three weeks ago, on Wednesday, October 4th, Ithaca’s Mayor, and Cornell alum, Svante Myrick ’09, presented his proposal for Ithaca’s 2019 budget. Amongst discussion of a property tax decrease, the staffing of the police department and the creation of a new street crew dedicated to improving local road quality, the mayor had some choice words for the institution which he called home for four years. In addition to pointing out that Cornell’s $2.1 billion of tax-exempt properties are equal in value to the value of all taxable properties in the entirety of Ithaca, Myrick stated that “We would be better off if any other Ivy League School were in Ithaca.”
Immediately following this comment, and in a later interview with the Sun, he specifically mentioned that Harvard — our rival in both hockey and use of colors that generally fit the description of ‘red’ — would be better for Ithaca than Cornell currently is. It might seem unfathomable that a Cornell alumnus should invoke the rest of the Ivies, and especially the Crimson, in a positive light. And yet, such is the relationship between Cornell and the city it calls home.
The American tax code is one of the most complex and byzantine bureaucratic structures in the federal government. The tax code currently stands at an eye-popping 9,000 pages and is often considered the most complex system of its kind in the world. To even remotely understand the inner workings of the nation’s tax system requires years of education and training –– making it all but impossible for the average American to comprehend how their taxes are calculated and spent. The sheer size of the nation’s tax code is a hindrance to both greater financial equality and economic prosperity. In terms of income taxes, the nation operates on a “progressive tax” system –– the more money you make, the higher the percentage of your income goes to Uncle Sam.