Open Elmira

Following the money in the City of Elmira and Chemung County — a frozen assessment roll, a heavily exempt tax base, a shrinking share of the county sales tax, and who ends up paying the bill.

$912.7M
City assessed value
38.9%
Off the tax rolls (exempt)
$74.4M
County sales-tax revenue (2024)
~$22.8M
Sales tax lost to the city since 2015
30.2%
City residents in poverty
What This Site Is About
The numbers behind a city at a breaking point — and what its leaders could do about it.

The City of Elmira has one of the highest property tax rates in New York State¹ and 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 — frozen assessments, unchallenged exemptions, and a shrinking share of the countywide sales tax — have hollowed out the revenue base that city services depend on. 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.

Explore the Data
Each section documents a different part of the picture.
🏦
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.
🤝
The City–County Relationship
The sales-tax split and the shared-services dispute (Res. 15-114). The city's share fell from 12.33% to 8.2% — a ~$22.8M cumulative loss.
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County Budget Overview
Chemung County runs on sales tax (38.9% of revenue vs 14.2% property). Explore the General Fund and how Chemung compares to its neighbors.
🩺
Fiscal Decoder
Elmira's audited finances run through the Strong Towns 7-indicator framework. Three red, three yellow — only interest payments are green.
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City of Elmira
Frozen assessment roll, 39% exempt value, blight proxy, and what reassessment would mean.
📊
Assessment Regressivity
A $40K home pays 72% more property tax per dollar of value than a $300K home. Six thousand actual sales prove it.
⚖️
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.
📉
The Long Decline
How Elmira lost half its population since 1950 — deindustrialization, the 1972 flood, white flight, and the county fiscal relationship that compounded the damage.
⚠️
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.
📐
Tax Value per Acre
The Arnot Mall produces $72K/acre. A downtown Elmira apartment block produces $7.9M/acre. The "miles per gallon" of fiscal productivity.
💰
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.
🗺️
Interactive Map
All 39K+ geocoded parcels, colored by property type. Toggle types and click any parcel for details.
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Multi-Year Trends
Assessment changes from 2021 to 2025 by municipality and property type. Where is the tax base growing?
Data & Methods

Data Source

NYS ORPTS assessment rolls via data.ny.gov (dataset 7vem-aaz7). 2025 roll year shown here; 2021–2025 used for trend analysis.

Municipality Names

Place names resolved from SWIS codes, not the raw municipality_name field. Villages (Horseheads, Elmira Heights) correctly split from their parent towns.

Coordinates

NY State Plane Central (EPSG:2261, US survey feet) converted to WGS84 using pyproj. 98.2% of parcels have valid coordinates.

Source Code

download_data.py — fetches assessment data
build_budget_json.py — OSC city/county budgets
visualize*.py — charts & maps

Budget Data

NYS Comptroller Annual Update Documents (line-item revenues/expenditures) for the City of Elmira and Chemung County. See Data & Sources.

¹ Elmira's average full-value tax rate ranked 9th-highest among NYS cities in 2009–13 (NYS Financial Restructuring Board, 2016), and 8th-highest by effective rate in a 2020 ranking (Empire Center).
² Poverty rate: U.S. Census, ACS 2024 5-year estimate (Elmira city 30.2% vs. ~14% statewide).